THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE 
CHRISTIAN    RELIGION 


Et  inde  admonitus  redire  ad  memetipsum,  intravi  in  intima  mea,  duce 
te  ;  et  potui,  quoniam  factus  es  adjutor  meus.  Intravi,  et  vidi  qualicum- 
que  oculo  animse  meae,  supra  eumdem  oculum  animse  meae,  supra 
mentem  meam,  lucem  incommutabilem  ;  non  hanc  vulgarem  et  con- 
spicuam  omni  carni  :  nee  quasi  ex  eodem  genere  grandior  erat,  tanquam 
si  ista  multo  multoque  clarius  claresceret,  totumque  occuparet  magnitu- 
dine.  Non  hoc  ilia  erat ;  sed  aliud,  aliud  valde  ab  istis  omnibus.  Nee 
ita  erat  supra  mentem  meam  sicut  oleum  supra  aquam,  nee  sicut  cceluin 
super  terram  ;  sed  superior,  quia  ipsa  fecit  me,  ct  ego  inferior,  quia  factus 
sum  ab  ea.  Qui  novit  veritatem,  novit  earn  ;  et  qui  novit  earn,  novit 
asternitatem.  Charitas  novit  earn.  O  sterna  veritas,  et  vera  charitas,  et 
chara  aeternitas  !  tu  es  Deus  meus  ;  tibi  suspiro  die  ac  nocte.  Et  cum 
te  primum  cognovi,  tu  assumpsisti  me,  ut  viderem  esse  quod  viderem, 
et  nondum  me  esse  qui  viderem.  Et  reverberasti  infirmitatem  aspectus 
mei,  radians  in  me  vehementer,  et  contremui  amore  et  horrore  ;  et  inveni 
longe  me  esse  a  te  in  regione  dissimilitudinis,  tanquam  audirem  vocem 
tuam  de  excelso  :  Cibus  sum  grandium  ;  cresce,  et  manducabis  me.  Nee 
tu  me  in  te  mutabis,  sicut  cibum  carnis  tuae ;  sed  tu  mutaberis  in  me. 
Et  cognovi  quoniam  pro  iniquitate  erudisti  hominem,  et  tabescere  fecisti 
sicut  araneam  animam  meam ;  et  dixi  :  Numquid  nihil  est  veritas, 
quoniam  neque  per  finita,  neque  per  infinita  locorum  spatia  diffusa  est. 
Et  clamasti  de  longinquo  :  I  mo  vero,  Ego  sum  qui  sum.  Et  audivi 
sicut  auditur  in  corde,  et  non  erat  prorsus  unde  dubitarem ;  faciliusque 
dubitarem  vivere  me,  quani  non  esse  veritatem,  quae  per  ea  quas  facta 
sunt,  intellecta  conspicitur. — AUGUSTINE. 

There  is  not  anything  that  I  know,  which  hath  done  more  mischief  to 
Religion,  than  the  disparaging  of  Reason,  under  pretence  of  respect  and 
favour  to  it :  For  hereby  the  very  Foundations  of  Christian  Faith  have 
been  undermin'd,  and  the  World  prepared  for  Atheism.  And  if  Reason 
must  not  be  heard,  the  Being  of  a  God,  and  the  Authority  of  Scripture, 
can  neither  be  proved  nor  defended ;  and  so  our  Faith  drops  to  the 
Ground  like  a  House  that  hath  no  Foundation. — GLANVILL. 


THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE 
CHRISTIAN   RELIGION 


BY 

ANDREW   MARTIN   FAIRBAIRN,  M.A.,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF   MANSFIELD  COLI.Kr.E,   OXFORD 

AUTHOR   OF  "STUDIES   IN   THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION" 

"CHRIST  IN   MODERN   THEOLOGY,"   ETC. 


ov  yap  eaTLV  7rpoa-(iOTro\^-^ria  rrapa  TU>  0e&> 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

LONDON  :  MACMILLAN   &  CO.,  LTD. 

1902 

AH  rights  reserved 


i 

A 


COPYRIGHT,    1902, 
BY  THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY. 


/x    *-- 

•x* 

Set  up  and  electrotyped  May,  1902.      Reprinted  October, 
1902.  -  V\J 


Nortoooti  ^Stress 

J.  S.  Cashing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


THIS   BOOK 

IS    DEDICATED    TO 

ALEXANDER    MACKENNAL 
ALBERT   SPICER 

AND   TO   THE    MEMORY    OF 

ROBERT    WILLIAM    DALE 

IN    GRATEFUL    RECOGNITION    OF 

SERVICES 

RENDERED    FREELY    AND    WITHOUT    STINT    TO 
MANSFIELD    COLLEGE 

AND    OF 

FRIENDSHIPS 

WHICH    HAVE    ENHANCED    THE    WORTH    AND    THE    JOY    OF    LIFE 


P.C.R. 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  may  be  described  as  an  attempt  to  do  tv/o 
things  :  first,  to  explain  religion  through  nature  and 
man  ;  and,  secondly,  to  construe  Christianity  through  religion. 
The  author  conceives  religion  to  be  a  joint  product  of  the 
mind  within  man  and  the  nature  around  him,  the  mind  being 
the  source  of  the  ideas  which  constitute  its  soul,  the  nature 
around  determining  the  usages  and  customs  which  build 
up  its  body.  He  does  not  think,  therefore,  that  any  one  of 
its  special  forms  can  be  explained  without  the  local  nature 
which  begot  and  shaped  it,  or  that  its  general  being  can  be 
resolved  and  construed  without  the  reason  or  thought  which 
is  common  to  the  race.  He  sees  in  religion  the  greatest  of 
all  man's  unconscious  creations,  and  the  most  potent  of  the 
means  which  the  past,  while  it  was  still  a  living  present, 
formed  for  the  making  of  the  man  and  the  times  that  were 
yet  to  be. 

The  beliefs  of  the  author  are  writ  large  on  almost  every 
page,  and  these  he  need  neither  explain  nor  justify  here  ;  but 
a  word  or  two  may  be  said  as  to  the  occasion  which  defined 
not  so  much  the  problem  of  the  book  as  its  scope  and  point 
of  view.  Some  years  ago  he  had  the  honour  of  being  ap- 
pointed by  the  University  of  Chicago  lecturer  on  the  Haskell 
foundation.  The  conditions  of  the  endowment  were  that  a 
certain  number  of  lectures  should  be  delivered  in  India, 
especially  in  the  Presidency  towns.  In  India  the  author 
suddenly  found  himself  face  to  face  with  a  religion  he  had 
studied  in  its  literature  and  by  the  help  of  interpreters  of 


viii  PREFACE 

many  minds  and  tongues,  and  this  contact  with  reality  at 
once  illuminated  and  perplexed  him.  It  was  not  so  much 
that  his  knowledge  was  incorrect  or  false,  as  that  it  was  mis- 
taken in  its  emphasis.  No  religion  can  be  known  in  its 
Sacred  Books  alone,  or  simply  through  its  speculative  think- 
ers and  religious  reformers  ;  and  of  all  religions  the  one  that 
these  can  least  interpret  is  the  encyclopaedic  aggregation 
of  cults  and  customs  we  know  as  Hinduism.  Hence  he 
realized  as  he  had  never  done  before  the  force  of  custom 
and  usage,  of  social  convention  and  religious  observance,  the 
didactic  and  coercive  power  of  a  worship  which  can  com- 
mand obedience  where  its  value  is  doubted,  or  even  where 
it  is  denied  and  despised.  He  saw  a  religion  which  had  an 
innumerable  multitude  of  deities  and  an  indescribable  variety 
of  worships,  which  had  grown  out  of  a  simple  and  primitive 
naturalism  that  had  no  knowledge  of  these  gods  and  rites, 
which  had  had  hosts  of  reformers  who  had  yet  only  added  to 
the  mythologies  and  cults  they  had  set  out  to  purge  and 
reform,  and  which  still  amid  so  many  changes  was  conceived 
and  described  as  one  religion,  and  as  continuous  with  that  of 
the  ancient  Aryan  men.  Hence  he  was  confronted  with 
certain  philosophical  problems  which  he  had  to  attempt  to 
solve  before  he  could  think  of  undertaking  any  large  his- 
torical investigation  : — What  is  religion  in  general  ?  How 
and  why  has  it  arisen  ?  What  causes  have  made  religions 
to  differ  ?  Is  the  multitude  as  good  for  man  permanently 
as  it  has  been  necessary  to  his  development  ?  What  are 
the  ultimate  constituents  of  religions, — ideas  and  beliefs,  or 
customs  and  institutions  ?  If  by  their  usages  and  observ- 
ances some  religions  are  native  to  certain  localities  and 
peoples,  and  alien  from  certain  other  places  and  races, — can 
a  religion  whose  institutions  are  at  once  local  and  essential 
be  universal  ?  How  has  it  happened  that  certain  religions 
have  become  missionary  while  others  have  never  desired  or 
been  able  to  transcend  the  limits  of  the  tribe  or  the  home  ? 


PREFACE  ix 

What   attributes   must   distinguish  a   missionary  from    non- 
missionary  religions? 

These  then  were  the  problems  which  created  this  book, 
for  they  compelled  the  author  to  study  his  own  faith  in 
their  light.  He  could  not  but  feel  that  'Christianity  stood 
among  the  religions  which  must  be  historically  investigated 
and  philosophically  construed  ;  and  that  no  greater  injury 
could  be  done  to  it  than  to  claim  for  it  exceptional  considera- 
tion at  the  hands  of  the  historical  student  or  philosophical 
thinker.  For  he  who  advances  such  a  claim  practically  sur- 
renders either  the  truth  and  equity  of  his  religion,  or  the 
integrity  of  the  reason  which  was  God's  own  gift  to  man. 
But  it  is  further  obvious  that  the  mode  of  interpreting  other 
religions,  especially  as  regards  the  fundamental  point  of  the 
origin  and  warrant  of  the  ideas  which  are  as  the  heart  or 
basis  common  to  all,  has  the  most  serious  possible  signifi- 
cance for  Christianity.  For  if  our  primary  and  original 
beliefs  be  but  the  glorified  survivals  of  certain  "  mistaken 
inferences "  deduced  by  savage  man  from  the  phenomena 
either  of  his  own  dreams  or  of  a  nature  he  did  not  under- 
stand, then  it  is  clear  that  every  religion  will  be  made  to 
suffer  from  the  inherent  and  inherited  sin  of  its  remotest 
ancestor.  And,  again,  if  great  historical  religions  which 
innumerable  millions  of  men,  as  rational  as  we,  have  pro- 
fessed through  thousands  of  ages,  be  resolved  into  systems 
of  error  and  delusion  that  only  the  blind  deceitfulness  of  the 
human  heart  could  tempt  man  to  believe,  then  it  is  evident 
that  we  dare  not  use  the  reason  or  the  conscience  which 
we  have  so  discredited  either  to  believe  or  to  attest  or 
to  justify  the  truth  of  our  own.  In  other  words,  the  philo- 
sophy that  misreads  the  origin  of  religious  ideas  and  the 
historv  of  any  religion  will  not,  and  indeed  cannot,  be  just  to 
the  Christian  ;  while  he  who  would  maintain  the  Christian 
must  be  just  and  even  generous  to  all  the  religions  created 
and  professed  of  men. 


x  PREFACE 

This  book,  then,  is  neither  a  philosophy  nor  a  history  of 
religion,  but  it  is  an  endeavour  to  look  at  what  is  at  once  the 
central  fact  and  idea  of  the  Christian  faith  by  a  mind  whose 
chief  labour  in  life  has  been  to  make  an  attempt  at  such  a 
philosophy  through  such  a  history.  The  Son  of  God  holds 
in  His  pierced  hands  the  keys  of  all  the  religions,  explains  all 
the  factors  of  their  being  and  all  the  persons  through  whom 
they  have  been  realized.  And  this  means  that  the  author 
would  not,  if  he  could,  take  the  religion  he  loves  out  of  the 
cycle  of  the  historical  religions.  On  the  contrary,  he  holds 
that  Christianity  must  stand  there  if  it  is  to  be  really  known 
and  truly  honoured.  The  time  is  coming,  and  we  shall  hope 
that  the  man  is  coming  with  it,  which  shall  give  us  a  new 
Analogy,  speaking  a  more  generous  and  hopeful  language, 
breathing  a  nobler  spirit,  aspiring  to  a  larger  day  than 
Butler's.  It  will  seek  to  discover  in  man's  religions  the  story 
of  his  quest  after  God,  but  no  less  of  God's  quest  after  him  ; 
and  it  will  listen  in  all  of  them  for  the  voice  of  the  Eternal, 
who  has  written  His  law  upon  the  heart  in  characters  that 
can  never  be  eradicated.  And  it  will  argue  that  a  system 
whose  crown  and  centre  is  the  Divine  Man,  is  one  which 
does  justice  to  everything  positive  in  humanity  by  penetrat- 
ing it  everywhere  with  Deity.  The  Incarnation,  as  here 
read,  is  the  very  truth  which  turns  nature  and  man,  history 
and  religion  into  the  luminous  dwelling-place  of  God. 

In  sending  out  this  book  the  author  must  record  his 
gratitude  to  two  friends  :  Mr.  P.  E.  Matheson,  M.A.,  Fellow 
of  New  College,  Oxford,  for  his  patience  in  reading  the 
proofs,  and  for  the  many  emendations  in  style  and  expression 
he  has  suggested  ;  and  the  Rev.  R.  S.  Franks,  M.A.,  B.  Litt, 
formerly  of  Mansfield  College,  now  of  Birkenhead,  for  his 
labour  in  drawing  up  the  Table  of  Contents  and  preparing 
the  Index. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 

FACE 

THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION         ....  3-19 
§  I.   The  Person  of  Christ  as  the  Mystery  of  the  Christian  Religion     3-7 

1.  The  Jesus  of  the  Gospels  and  the  Christ  of  the  Creeds  ; 

the  place  of  mystery  in  religion     .....         3 

2.  Mysteries  of  nature  and  mysteries  of  art          ...         5 
§11.  Need  the  Person  be  a  Mystery 7-12 

1.  Dialectic  analysis  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation      .         7 

2.  Literary  and  historical  analysis  of  the  same  10 
§  III.    Why  there  is  a  Problem  of  the  Person          .         .         .          12-19 

1.  The  common  defect  of  the  foregoing  dialectic  and  literary 

analyses  is  neglect  of  the  place  of  Christ  in  history      .       12 

2.  It  is  the  divine  Christ  who  has  entered  into  history         .        14 

3.  The  problems  raised  by  the  person  of  Christ   are  both 

literary  and  speculative.  Christ  is  in  history  as  God 
is  in  nature.  Reason  must  construe  the  doctrine  of 
His  Person  ....  16 


BOOK    I 

QUESTIONS   IN    THE    PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE  AND 

MIND   WHICH   AFFECT  BELIEF  IN  THE 

S  UPERNA  TURA  L   PERSON 

CHAPTER    I 

THE  BELIEF  AS  A  PROIU.F.M  IN  TIIK  PHILOSOPHY  OF  NATURE       23-60 
§  I.   The  Idens  of  Nature  and  the  Supernatural    .         .         .          23-27 
I.  The   incompatibility    of  the  doctrine  of  the    Person   of 

Christ  with  the  scientific  view  of  Nature       ...       23 
2    Hume's  argument  against  miracles  criticized  on  the  basis 

of  his  own  philosophy   .......       24 


xii  CONTENTS 

PAGB 

§11.  Nature  and  Thought 27-37 

1.  Nature  does  not  interpret  man  :  man  interprets  Nature       27 

2.  Nature  and  Personality  :  What  thought  gives  to  Nature 

and  what  sense  perceives  in  it       .         .         .         .         .30 

3.  Energy  known  in  Nature  because  freedom  is  in  man     .       33 

4.  Nature  a  visual  language  ;  the  intellect  and  the  intelli- 

gible expressions  of  one  Intelligence    ....       35 
§111.  Mind  and  the  Process  of  Creation        ....          37~5S 

1.  The  problem  of  Evolution  not  organism,  but  the  Reason 

that  organizes 38 

2.  Methods  of  solution 40 

A.  The  Regressive  Method 41 

i.  Man  and  ape  in  natural  and  in  civil  history. 

Why  do  their  histories  differ?    ...  41 

ii.   Darwin's  petitio  principii       ....  46 

B.  The  Egressive  Method 48 

i.  Matter  cannot   originate  Mind  :  speculative 
paralysis  of  the  school  of  Hume  :  specula- 
tive passion  of  Science         ....       48 
ii.  Granted  the  speculative  conception  of  matter, 
can    the   creative   process   be   explained? 
Intelligence  in  Evolution     ....       53 
§  IV.  Conclusions  and  Inferences    ......          55~6o 

1.  A.  Nature  must  be  conceived  through  the  supernatural       56 

B.  («)  The  real  creation  of  God  is  spirit  57 
(/3)  He  remains  in   active  relation   with   the  spirits 

He  has  made    .......  58 

C.  God's  creative  action  never  ceases      ....  58 

D.  This  is  the  meaning  ot  the  doctrine  of  Evolution      .  59 

2.  The  key  of  all  mysteries  is  man       .....  60 

CHAPTER    II 

THE  PROBLEM  AS  AFFECTED  BY  THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  ETHICS  61-93 
§  I.    The  Problems  raised  by  Man  as  an  Ethical  Being :  Moral 

Judgements  imply  a  Moral  Standard .         .          .         .          61-63 
§11.  Empiricism  in  Knowledge  and  in  Ethics       .         .         .          63-68 

1.  Intimate  connexion  between  the  metaphysics    of  know- 

ledge and  of  ethics         ...         ....       63 

2.  Moral  systems  of  Hobbes,  Hume,  and  Bentham    .         .       65 

3.  These  imply  man's  transcendence  of  Nature  ;  but  fail  to 

relate  the  individual  to  society 67 

§111.   Ethics  and  Evolution 68-74 

i.  The  inherited  social  inteiest    ......       68 

A.   Darwin's  theory  of  accidental  variations    ...       70 


CONTENTS  xiii 

PACK 

B.  Spencer's  principle  of  conservation  of  life.         .        .  70 

2.    i.  The  question  of  time  not  vital 7~ 

ii.  The  transmission  of  acquired  characters  dubious      .  72 

iii.   Differences  more  important  than  similarities      .         .  73 
iv.  The  end   not  the  adjustment   of  the   individual   to 

society,  but  of  both  to  the  ideal       ....  74 
§  IV.    What  do  Moral  Judgements  Involve? .        .         .        .          74-83 

1.  The  question  of  Freedom 75 

2.  The  idea  of  the  Right  ;  the  Right  as  happiness      .         .  78 

(a)  What  is  happiness  ?      .         .         ....  79 

(/3)  What  sort  of  happiness  is  the  measure  of  the 

Right? 79 

(y)  Whose  is  the  happiness  ? 80 

3.  Duty  or  conscience  .......  8l 

§  V.   The  Ethical  Man  means  an  Ethical  Universe  :  Butler  and 

Kant 83-89 

1.  Butler  and  Kant  compared      ......       83 

2.  Butler  on  the  moral  law  and  its  Giver     ....       85 

3.  Kant's  categorical    imperative   and   his    deductions   of 

Freedom,  Immortality  and  God 87 

§  VI.  Deductions  and  Conclusion    ......          89-93 

1.  Moral  evil  transcends  Nature  because  creative       .         .  89 

2.  Self-realization  the  law  of  human  progress       ...  90 

3.  Man  cannot  be  measured  by  Nature        ....  91 

4.  Moral  good  is  realized  in  persons    .....  92 

5.  A  supreme  Personality  the  fitting  vehicle  of  the  highest 

good 93 

CHAPTER    III 

THE  QUESTION  AS  AFFECTKD  BY  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL. 

A.   Historical  and  Critical         .....        94-131 

jj    I.    TTudfV   TO    KtlKOV    J  ........  94-99 

1.  The  problem  appeals  to  the  finest  spirits         ...       94 

2.  Moral  evil  the  gravest  problem        .....       96 

3.  The  problem  intensified  by  belief  in  God         ...       97 
§11.   Optimism  and  Evil         .......        99-111 

1.  Optimism  of  Plato  and   the   Stoics,  of   Augustine    and 

Nicholas  of  Cusa  ........       99 

2.  Leibnitz  and  Pope    ........      103 

i.  The  Theodicee  .         .         ,         .         .         .         .         .104 
ii.  The  Essay  on  Man  .         .         .          .          .          .         .106 

3.  Criticism  of  Pope  :   Voltaire  :  problem  of  the  survival  of 

the  fittest 107 

P.C.R.  c 


xiv  CONTENTS 

PAGB 

§111.  Pessimism  Ancient  and  Modern 111-117 

1.  The  causes  of  Pessimism in 

2.  Pessimism  Uncongenial  to  the  Greek  mind  :  compared 

with  Mediaeval  Asceticism  .         .         .         .         .         .113 

3.  Pessimism  in  Goethe  and  Byron :  in  modern  politics     .     114 
§  IV.  Eastern  and  Western  Pessimism 117-131 

1.  Philosophical  Buddhism  :  its  origin  and  aim  .         .         .     117 

2.  Western     Pessimism.      Schopenhauer  :    influenced   by 

Kant,  Fichte  and  Buddha  :  compared  with  Buddha. 
Von  Hartmann 121 

3.  Appreciation  and  criticism  of  Pessimism  :  Gain  or  loss?     127 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE  QUESTION  AS  AFFECTED  BY  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL. 

B.  Some  suggestions  towards  a  solution  .         .         .      132-168 
§1.   The  Limits  and  Terms  of  the  Discussion         .        .        .      132-136 

1.  The  Responsibility  of  God 132 

2.  Distinction  of  physical  and  moral  evil :  the  painfulness 

of  experience 134 

A.  Physical  Evil  :  its  kinds  and  functions       .         .         .     136 
§11.  Man  in  the  Hands  of  Nature 136-141 

1.  Evils  arising  from  the  inter-relations  of  man  and  nature 

classified         .........     139 

2.  Functions  of  physical  evils      ......     137 

i.  Education  in  the  arts     .         .        .         .        .        .137 

ii.  Education  in  humanity.         .....     138 

iii.  The  motherhood  of  Nature  .....      139 

iv.  Nature  inexorable  that  she  may  be  beneficent      .     140 
§111.  Evils  Peculiar  to  Man 141-146 

1.  Death  man's  tragedy        .......     141 

2.  What  life  gains  through  death        .         .        .        .         .144 
§  IV.  Evils  Man  Suffers  from  Man 146-152 

1.  Classification:   the  problem  raised.         ....     146 

2.  The  physical  constitution  of  the  race  morally  educative  : 

immortality  and  the  problem  of  evil      ....     147 

B.  Moral  Evil  :  its  Nature,  Origin  and  Continuance       .     150 
§  V.  Moral  Evil  and  God 152-158 

1.  God  as  conditioned  in  creation        .         .         .         .         .152 

i.  External  conditions        ......     153 

ii.   Internal  conditions 154 

2.  Conditions    defining   the  character   and   states   of  the 

creature 155 


CONTENTS  xv 

PAGE 

i.  A  creature  necessarily  limited  in  knowledge.         .      155 
ii.  'The  end  of  the  creation  God's  glory  and  human 

good.     God  reflected  in  a  creature     .         .         .156 

(a)   Moral 156 

O)  Free 157 

^  VI.   The  Permission  of  Moral  Evil  and  the  Deity      .         .      159-163 

1.  Law  and  freedom  necessary  correlatives  :  involve  possi- 

bility of  evil 159 

2.  Interference  no  remedy    .......     162 

jjVII.    Why  Evil  has  been  Allowed  to  Continue     .         .         .      163-168 

1.  How  moral  and  physical  evil  are  related.       God  views 

the  race  as  a  whole 163 

2.  A  state  of  suffering  not  one  of  probation,  but  of  recovery 

from  lapse,  the  last  word  not  Nature's  .         .         .         .166 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HISTORY 169-185 

§  I.   The  Significance  of  History     .         .         .         .         .         .      171-175 

1.  Mm  denotes  the  race,  history  its  articulated  mind.         .     171 

2.  The  growth  of  consciousness  :  its  problems  personal  and 

collective        .........      172 

3.  These  problems  of  interest  only  when   man  realizes  the 

idea  of  his  unity    ........      173 

§11.    The  Ideas  of  Unity  and  Order  in  History      .         .         .      175-181 

1.  What  the  idea  of  unity  signifies       .....      175 

2.  The  unity  as  an  immanent  teleology        .         .         .         .176 

3.  Order  in  history  a   late  idea,   nevertheless   necessary  ; 

distinction  from  the  order  of  Nature     ....      178 
§111.    The  Cause  of  Order  in  History 181-185 

1.  Mind  the  maker  of  order 181 

i.    Man  its  vehicle      .         .         .         .         .         .         .181 

ii.  Action  of  Nature  on  Man       .....     181 

iii.          „       of  Men         „      „ 182 

iv.         „      of  God         „      „ 182 

2.  How  does  the  idea  of  order  arise  in  Man's  life         .         .     183 

i.  An  ethical  substituted  for  a  cosmic  process  .         .      183 
ii.    Primary  passion-.  .          .          .         .          .         .         .183 

iii.   Their  regulation    .          .          .          .          .         .          .184 

iv.  An  ideal  authority 184 

v.  The  ideal  must  be  immanent          .         .         .         .185 

vi.   Does  it  exist  ? 185 

vii.   Religion  the  answer      ......     185 


xvi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  VI 

FAGS 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 186-226 

A.  Religion  :  its  Idea  and  Origin    ..... 

§  I.  The  Phenomena  to  be  Studied :  the  Religions  .         .        .      187-194 

1.  The  outfit  of  man,  savage  and  civilized  .         .         .         .187 

(a)  Material: 188 

O)  Spiritual 189 

2.  Vision  of  the  Religions  in  history    .....     190 

3.  Religion  the  mother  of  order,  and   creator  of  law  and 

custom 192 

§11.  Religion  as  Universal  is  Native  to  Man        .         .        .      194-200 

1.  The    science    of  Nature  and  man  incomplete  without 

religion  :  man  more  than  his  environment  .         .         .     194 

2.  Man  cannot  escape  from  Religion 196 

3.  Religion  as  architectonic  idea  :  the  problems  of  Religion     197 
§  III.    The  Idea  and  Origin  of  Religion.         ....      200-208 

1.  Religion  subjective  and  objective    .....     200 

i.    Religion  an  exercise  of  the  entire  spirit  of  man    .     200 
ii.  Religion  a  mutual  relation  between  man  and  God     202 

2.  Man  the  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  of  Religion  ; 

ethnography  not  a  philosophy  ;  Spencer's  anthropo- 
logical theory  stated  and  criticized        ....     203 
§  IV.  Ethnographic  and  Historical  Religion.         .        .         .      208-215 

1.  The  ethnographic   method    subjective  :    the    historical 

objective 208 

2.  Religion  no  superstition 209 

(a)  Religion  rooted  in  reason,  but  conditioned  by 

Nature 210 

O)  Ethnographical  religion  unreal  :  savage  religion 

less  significant  than  civilized    .         .         .         .213 
§  V.  J^i?  Causes  of  Variation  in  Religion;  Conflict  of  its  Ideal  and 

formal  factors      ........      215-226 

1.  Race  as  factor  of  change 216 

2.  Place   as  formal  factor   of  ideas  :   transcendence   and 

immanence    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .218 

3.  Influence  of  ethnical  relations 220 

4.  Influence   of  history  :    the    gods  conceived    after  the 

fashion  of  men       .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .221 

5.  Influence  of  the  social  ideal  on  the  conception  of  Deity  .     222 

6.  Influence  of  creative  personalities  :  the  Divine  purpose 

in  history 223 


CONTENTS  xvii 

CHAPTER  VII 

PAGE 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF  RELIGION 

B.  The  Historical  Religions 227-257 

As  speech  to  dialects,  so  is  Mind  to  the  Religions      .     227 
§  I.  Religions  as  National  and  Missionary    ....      230-235 

1.  The  classification  and  its  limits  :  universal  empires   do 

not  beget  universal  religions 230 

2.  National  religions  which  are  missionary.         .         .         .     232 

3.  Missionary  religions    which    are    racial  :     Christianity 

seems  western  to  eastern  peoples.         ....     233 
§11.  The  Idea  and  the  Institution  in  Religion       .        .        .      235-240 

1.  The  universal  and  the  local  in  religion  ;  custom  in  Greek 

religion  and  reason  in  Greek  philosophy      .         .         .     235 

2.  Opposed  action  of  custom  and  of  thought  in  religion      .     238 
§111.    The  Idea  of  God  in  Religion 

A.  Buddhism 240-244 

1.  Whether  a  Theism  ........     240 

2.  Apotheosis  of  a  moral  ideal 242 

§  IV.   The  Idea  of  God  in  Religion 

B.  Hebraic  monotheism 244-253 

1.  Monotheism  begins  as  a  tribal  cult  ....     244 

2.  But  soon  reveals  its  intrinsic  character  : 

Hebrew  history  of  creation,  man  and  religion       .         .     246 

3.  Action  of  the  idea  and  the  institution  within  the  religion     248 

(a)  Jehovah  transcends  Israel :  becomes  ethical    in 

character  :  man  holy  as  God  is  holy    .         .         .     248 

(#)  The  tribal  instinct  controls  the  worship      .         .251 

§  V.  Judaism  at  Home  and  in  the  Dispersion          .         .         .      253-257 

1.  How  Greek  life  and  thought  made  Hebraism  Hellenistic     255 

2.  Judaism    as   the   victory  of  the    local  cult,    yet  as   the 

vehicle  of  the  universal  idea  2;; 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FOUNDED  RELIGIONS  AND  THKIR  FOUNDERS 
j5  I.  Religions,  Spontaneous  and  Founded 

1.  Spontaneous  religions   apotheoses    of   Nature  : 

apotheoses  of  personalities   .... 

2.  Personal  religions  rise  out  of  natural,  and  need 

i.  An  historical  substructure 
ii.  A  creative  religious  genius 
iii.  A  congenial  society,  in  which  to  live 


xviii  CONTENTS 


PAGE 


§11.  Impersonal  Religions  Classified  as  Personal ,        .         .      265-270 
i.  Confucius  a  statesman,  but  not  the  founder  of  a 

religion 266 

ii.  Monotheism  not  the  creation  of  Moses,  but  of 

Israel 267 

§111.  Religions,  Founded  and  Personal        ....      270-286 

A.  Buddha  and  His  Religion  ......  270 

1.  Buddha  the  creator  of  a  religion  missionary  yet  Indian  : 

the  India  of  Buddha     .......  270 

2.  His  philosophy  and  discipline          .....  273 

3.  His  apotheosis   through   the    Church  :     his    humanity 

humanizes  the  ethics  of  Buddhism       ....  274 

B.  Mohammed  and  Islam        .....         .  277 

I.  Mohammed  compared  with  Buddha :  his  character  and 

education:  the  vision  of  Abraham        ....  277 

4.  Islam  and  the  sword  :  severity  and  mercy  of  the  Prophet  280 

3.  His  religion  and  state  :  ultimate  ideas  of  Islam      .         .  283 

4.  The  man  incarnate  in  the  word  :  the  miraculous   in  the 

history  of  the  Koran      .......  285 

§  IV.  Canons  of  Criticism  or  Regulative  Ideas  for  the  Interpreta- 
tion of  the  Christian  Religion 286-289 

i.  The  Founder  and  His  Religion  a  unity         .         .  287 

ii.  He  has  both  an  ideal  and  an  historical  significance  287 
iii.  His    historical    Person    determines  the  form    of 

His  Religion 287 

iv.  His  ideal   significance  determines   its  value   for 

man     .........  287 

v.  His  word  never  ceases 288 


CONTENTS  xix 


BOOK  II. 

THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST  AND    THE  MAKING   OF   THE 
CHRISTIAN  RELIGION. 

IN  THREE  PARTS. 

FAGS 

1.  The  Founder  as  an  historical  person  ;  or  Jesus  as  con- 

ceived and  represented  in  the  evangelical  history     311-433 

2.  The  interpretation  of  the  Founder;  or  the  creation  of 

the  Christian  Religion  through  the  Apostolical  con- 
struction of  Jesus  as  the  Christ  ....  435-514 

3.  The  comparison  of  the  elements  and  ideas  in  this  inter- 

pretation with  those  most  constitutive  in  the  ideal  of 
Religion  as  conserved  and  exemplified  in  the  Historical 
Religions 517-568 

INTRODUCTORY 

RECAPITULATION  AND  STATEMENT  OF  THE  NEW  QUESTION   291-309 
§  I.  The  Old  Problem 291-295 

1.  The  common  ground  of  the  intellect  and  the  intelligible 

in  a  creative  intelligence 291 

2.  The  ethical  in  man  involves  an  ethical  God    .         .         .291 

3.  Evil  owes  its  being  to  man,  but  increases  the  responsi- 

bility of  his  Creator       .......  292 

4.  God  as  active  in  history  .......  292 

5.  Importance  of  religion     .......  293 

6.  Religions  natural  and   universal  :    the   achievement   of 

Christ 293 

7.  Christianity  a  founded  religion         .....     294 
§11.   The  New  Problem 296 

Its  questions  and  their  ancillary  studies           .         .         .  295 
§  III.   The  Criticism  of  the  Literature  and  the  Person  .         .      296-302 
The  Gospels  and  the  Apostolical  writings  ;  speculation 

prior  to  history    ........  296 

i.  This  is  according  to  the  laws  of  thought        .         .  297 

ii.   Does  not  imply  neglect  of  the  history    .         .         .  298 
iii.  The     sources     of    the     Gospels  ;    contemporary 

history  in  the  Gospel           .....  298 

iv.  The  eye-witness  and  the  histories           .         .         .  299 

v.  The  historian  as  an  interpreter      ....  300 


xx  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§  IV.   The  Religion  and  the  Literature  .....      302-307 

1.  Schmiedel  and   the    Gospel   history.       The   teacher  a 

sovereign  personality    .......     302 

2.  The  Gospels  interpret  Jesus  as  the  Christ       .         .         .     305 
§  V.   The  Founder  and  the  Religion       .....      307-309 

1.  False  antithesis  of  natural  and  supernatural  :  problems 

raised  by  the  Person  and  the  history    ....     307 

2.  Three  main  questions  : 

i.  The  historical  Jesus 309 

ii.  The  Christ  of  Faith 309 

iii.  How  Christianity  came  to  be  a  religion        .        .     309 


PART  I 

THE    FOUNDER    AS    AN  HISTORICAL    PERSON,    OR 

JESUS  AS    HE  APPEARS   IN   THE  SYNOPTIC 

GOSPELS 

CHAPTER  I 

How  His  PERSON  is  CONCEIVED 311-330 

§  I.  The  Natural  View  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels      .         .         .  311 

1.  Natural  factors  of  character :  and  the  natural  view  of 

Jesus 311 

2.  Caiaphas  governed  by  it ;  his  statecraft          .         .         .314 

3.  Pilate  also  governed  by  it  ;  the  Roman  touched  with 

pity;  his  vision  and  his  awakening       .         .         .         .317 

4.  An  immiraculous  Passion  becomes  a  mean  and  sordid 

riddle 322 

§  II.   The  Supernatural  View  of  Jesus 3  23-330 

1.  The  hypothesis  of  the  Gospels  common  and  prophetic  ; 

its  embodiment  in  a  personal  history  ....     323 

2.  The  miraculous  Person  a  rational  and  conscious  unity. 

Jesus  no  mythical    creation,  but  a  study  from  life  ; 

the  natural  and  supernatural  in  Him    ....     327 

CHAPTER  II 

THE    HISTORICAL    PERSON    AND    THE    PHYSICAL    TRANSCEND- 
ENCE         331-355 

§  I.  A  Sane  Supernaturalism 332-337 

1.  Acts  and  character  correspond  ;  the  mythical  imagina- 

tion unhealthy  ;  extravagance  of  Jerome  and  Gregory     332 

2.  Jesus  embodied  beneficence  ;  intellectual  sanity  of  the 

Evangelists 336 


CONTENTS  xxi 

PAGE 

§11.   The  Physical  Transcendence  is  Moral  Service      .         .      337~343 

1.  The  Temptation  a  subjective  process  ;  its  ethical  signi- 

ficance   337 

(a)  Conflict  of    the  ideal  of  dependence  with  the 

ideal  of  pre-eminence 338 

(j3)  Conflict  of  a  reasonable  against  a  presumptuous 

dependence 339 

(y)  Jesus  ethical  in  means  as  in  end         .         .         .341 

2.  The  temptation  continuous  and  signifies  that  Jesus  is 

governed  as  is  man        .......     341 

§  III.  Supernatural  Power  as  a  Moral  Burden    .         .        .      343-348 

1.  Absolute  power  depraves  man   unless  he  be  as  good  as 

God  ;  it  does  not  deprave  Jesus 343 

2.  Supernatural  power  alienates  man  from  man  ;  but  does 

not  estrange  him  from  Jesus          .....     346 
§  IV.   The  History  of  the  Supernatural  Person  as  a  Problem  in 

Literature 348-355 

1.  (a)  The  Supernatural  Person  elevates  the  idea  of  God  .     348 
(b)  How  should  we  write  the  history  ?   The  Supernatural 

Person.     How  the  Evangelists  do  it      .         .         .     350 

2.  The  Gospels  as  literature.     As  the  world  is  embosomed 

in  the  Infinite,  so  is  Jesus  in  God          ....     353 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ETHICAL  TRANSCENDENCE  OF  JESUS    ....     356-379 
§  I.   The  Ethical  Ideal  of  the  Gospels 357-3°i 

1.  The  ideal  of  the  imagination  and  the  real  figure  of  the 

Gospels 357 

2.  Difficulties  of  portraying  the  ethical  ideal        .         .         .     358 

i.  The  subject  must   be   an  unconscious  sitter,  as 

was  Jesus    ........     358 

ii.  The  writers  must  be  as  unconscious  of  their  art    .     356 

iii.   Light  and  shade  in  the  humanity  of  Jesus    .         .     360 

§  II.    The  Sinlessiicss  i~>f  Jesus         .         .         .         .         .         -361-367 

1.  The  external  testimony    .         .         .         .         .         .         -361 

2.  The  internal  evidence       .......     363 

i.  Jesus  has  no  consciousness  of  sin  ....     363 
ii.  The  Sinless  forgives,  yet  is  Friend  of  sinners        .     364 

3.  Jesus  perfect  ;  yet  without  the  mechanism  of  religion     .     365 


xxii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§  III.  Qualities  of  this  Ideal  of  Sinlessness  ;  its         .        .      367-373 

1.  Originality        .........     367 

2.  Catholicity 368 

3.  Potency  creates        ........     370 

(a)  The  idea  of  conversion         .         .         .        .         .371 

(/3)  Fear  of  sin  and  love  of  sanctity  ....     372 

§  IV.  Sinlessness  and  the  Moral  Person      ....      373-379 

1.  Sinlessness  applies  both  to  nature  and  conduct.    Sinless 

nature  not  explained  by  one  immaculate  conception. 
Sinlessness  distinguished  from  infallibility   .         .         .     373 

2.  The  Sinless  still  a  man  ;  but  man  ideal,  imitable  and 

Godlike 378 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  RELIGIOUS  PERSONALITY  INTERPRETED  BY  HIMSELF 

A.  The  Teaching  and  the  Person 380-400 

§  I.    The  Teaching  and  its  External  Characteristics      .         .      381-390 

1.  Tne  mind  of  Jesus  as  the  ideal  and  universal  mind       .     381 

2.  Simplicity  and  spontaneity  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  : 

Nature  and  man  as  reflected  in  it          .         .         .         .  382 

3.  i.  The  real  world  involves  the  reality  of  the  history  386 
ii.  Jesus  no  abstraction       ......  387 

iii.   His  teaching  timeless  and  placeless       .         .         .  388 

iv.  The  sovereign  idealism  of  the  world     .         .         .  389 

v.  What  it  has  achieved 390 

§   II.  How  Jesus  Conceives  and  Describes  Himself        .         .      391-395 

1.  The  reserve  of  His  early  ministry 391 

2.  His  claims 392 

i.   He  fulfils  law  and  prophecy 393 

ii.   He  saves  the  lost 393 

iii.  "Follow  Me" 393 

iv.   His  personal  sovereignty       .....  394 

v.   His  unique  relation  to  God    .....  394 

§   III.    The  Person  and  the  Passion          .....      395~399 

1.  The   "Galilean    Springtime";    the    harbinger   of    the 

Passion  .........     395 

2.  His  prophecy  of  the  Passion;   His  death  a  sacrifice        .     397 


CONTENTS  xxiii 


CHAPTER  V 

FACE 

THE  RELIGIOUS  PERSONALITY  INTERPRETED  BY  HIMSELF. 

B.  Significance  of  His  Death 400-433 

§  I.  Growth  of  the  idea 400-411 

1.  The  disciples  estranged  from  the  Master        .         .  .     400 

2.  His  death  "  a  ransom  for  many  "    .         .         .         .  .     403 

(a)   Different  interpretations  of  the  term  "  ransom  "     403 
(l>)  The  term   interpreted  by  the  context  ;  contrast 
between  the  kings  and  kingdoms,  their  means 
and  ends     ........     405 

3.  Results  of  the  analysis     .......     408 

(a)    Death  free,  not  compulsory         ....     408 
(/3)   His  motive  ........     409 

(y)  His  end 409 

(8)  Worth  of  the  ransom  .         .         .        .         .         .411 

(f)   Its  uniqueness 411 

§11.  How  Jerusalem  Helps  to  Define  the  Idea       .         .         .      411-418 

1.  The  entry  into  Jerusalem  is  the  King  coming  to  His  own. 
Which  yet  does  not  know  Him        .         .         .         .         .412 

2.  Teaching  of  the  Jerusalem  period  .         .         .         .         .415 

(a)   Exoteric  :    the    parables    spoken    in    Jerusalem 

explain  the  nature  of  His  Death       .         .         .415 

O)  Exoteric:   His  anointing  for  the  burying    .         .417 

§111.    The  Significance  of  the  Supper    .....      418-425 

1.  The  different  accounts  :  the  underlying  idea  the  same  .     418 

2.  What  Christ  meant  by  the  words  of  institution       .         .     421 

(<i)  The  antithesis  of  the  Covenants  .         .         .421 

(^)   What  the  Paschal  Sacrifice  signifies  .         .         .     422 
(y)  Christ   the  Sacrifice,   because  the   Head  of  the 

Race          ........     424 

§  IV.   Gethsemane  and  the  Cross     ......      425-433 

1.  Death  as  idea  and  experience  ;  joy  in  the  death  before 

Him  ;  agony  in  the  experience     .....     425 

2.  Interpretation  of  Gethsemane          .....     426 

3.  The  Evangelists  do  not  represent  the  agony  as  caused  by 

the  fear  of  death,  but  by  the  thought  of  its  means  and 
agents  ..........  428 

4.  The  horror  of  sin  to  Jesus  ;  sin  made  more  exceeding 

sinful  by  grace.  The  Passion  not  to  be  analyzed  ;  its 
infinite  reality  ;  the  Cross  creates  the  sense  of  sin, 
while  the  symbol  of  grace  ......  430 


xxiv  CONTENTS 


PART   II 

THE   CREATION  OF  THE   CHRISTIAN  RELIGION  BY 
THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST 

INTRODUCTORY 

PAGB 

THE  FACTS  TO  BE  INTERPRETED  AS  FACTORS  OF  RELIGION  ; 

LIMITS  OF  THE  DISCUSSION 435-437 

CHAPTER   I 

THE  PERSON  IN  THE  APOSTOLICAL  LITERATURE  .        .        .     438-451 
§  I.  Paul  and  the  Pauline  Literature    .....      439-443 

1.  His  epistles  autobiographic 439 

2.  His  many-sided  personality  ;  a  consistent  unity,  yet  an 

epitome  of  his  day 440 

§11.   The  Person  of  Christ  in  the  Pauline  Epistles        .        .      443-447 

1.  History  in  the  Epistles  and  in  the  Gospels     .        .         .     443 

2.  Christ's  ideal  majesty 444 

(a)  He  unifies  the  Race     ......     444 

(/3)  He  reveals  God 446 

§111.   The  Idea  in  Hebrews  and  the  Apocalypse    .         .         .      447-451 

1.  The   Person   of  Christ   interpreted   through  the  Alex- 

andrian philosophy        .......     447 

2.  The  might  of  Rome  and  the  King  of  kings     .         .         .     450 
§  IV.  The  Idea  in  the  Gospel  of  John 451-457 

1.  The  Prologue,  its  theology  and  relation  to  the  history  .     451 

2.  The  Logos  translated   into  the  Son,  who  becomes  the 

Ideal  of  man  and  true  tabernacle  of  Religion      .        .     454 

CHAPTER    II 

THE  GENESIS  OF  THE  IDEA 458-479 

§1.   The  Idea  and  the  Apostolic  Literature     ....      458-460 
§11.    Whether  Paul  was  the  Father  of  the  Idea     .         .         .      460-467 

1.  The  psychological   interpretation  of  the  Pauline  theo- 

logy ;  manifold  sources  of  the  same      ....     460 

2.  (a)   factors  in  Paul's  education  hostile  to  the  belief        .     464 
(/3)   Forces   and   circumstances   prophetic  of  it  ;  where 

psychology  fails  and  where  it  succeeds         .         .         .     465 
§  III.    Whether  the  Idea  is  the  Product  of  a  Mythical  Process    467-474 
I.  The  process   transfigures   the   Person  and  the  Death; 

defects  of  the  Mythical  Theory 467 


CONTENTS  xxv 

PAGE 

2.  Historical  Laws  which  the  Mythical  Theory  offends       .     470 
(a) 'The  mythical  construction  should  precede  the 

speculation  ;  here  the  reverse  is  the  case       .     470 
O)  Speculation  in  general  construes  history  :  here 

a  Person 472 

(y)  Speculation  must  be  germane  to  the  soil  out  of 
which  it  grows  :  here  its  product  seems 
alien.  For 

i.  It  grew  up  under  strict  Hebrew  mono- 
theism   473 

ii.  And   apotheosis   was    abhorrent   to   the 

New  Testament  writers        .         .         .     474 
§  IV.   The  Historical  Source  of  the  Idea         ....      474-479 

1.  The  mind  of  Christ  ...         .         .         .         .         .     474 

2.  The  interpretation  of  the  Person  creates  the  religion     .     476 

3.  The   Incarnation   the   Epitome  and  Mirror   of  all   the 

mysteries  of  Being 478 


CHAPTER    III 

THE  DEATH  OF  CHRIST  AND  CHRISTIAN  WORSHIP      .       .     480-514 

The  ideals  of  theology  expressed  in  worship 
§  I.  Christ  as  Idea  and  Institution 481-485 

1.  The   Cross   the   centre  of  Christian  worship  ;  contrast 

with  other  religions,  especially  Buddhism    .         .         .     481 

2.  The   Death    of   Christ  in    Apostolic   thought   more    an 

institution  than  a  doctrine     ......     484 

§  II.   The  Lei'itical  Legislation  and  the  Christian  Idea          .      486-492 

1.  Christ  in  the  new  religion  takes  the  place  of  the  Temple 

in  the  old 486 

2.  The  Temple  as  an  ideal  of  worship          ....  487 

3.  The  Apostles  and  the  Temple         .....  489 
§111.    The   Chi  istian  Idea  as  Interpreted  through  the  Lei'itical 

Categories     ........      492-500 

1.  The  sacrificial  idea  in  Paul     ......     492 

2.  Priest  and  sacrifice  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  :  the 

transitory  and  the  eternal      ......     494 

3.  Conclusions  of  the  Epistle       ......     407 

i.  The  Son  obedient  to  the  will  of  the  Father     .         .  497 

ii.  Worth  of  the  sacrifice  :  efficacy  of  the  priest  .  41, S 

iii.  Eternity  of  His  priesthood       .....  4<,<S 

iv.  Its  universality          .......  499 


xxvi  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

v.  The  sacrifice  vicarious 499 

vi.  Significance  of  the  substitution  of  a  person  for  an 

institution     ..'.....     500 

§  IV.   The  Christian  Sacrifice  as  Interpreted  through   the  Pro- 
phetic Idea.    Peter  and  the  Apocalypse         .        .      500-503 

§  V.   The  Christian  idea  as  Interpreted  through  the  Rabbinical 

Law 503-507 

1.  Levitical   and    Rabbinical    Judaism  ;    Paul's   sense   of 

defect  in  the  latter 503 

2.  His  antithetic  principles 504 

i.  Redemption  from  the  curse  of  the  law    .         .        .  504 

ii.  Christ  made  sin  for  us 505 

iii.  The  new  life 506 

(a)  The  condemnation  of  sin  in  the  flesh     .         .  506 

(/3)   The  constraining  love  of  Christ      .         .         .  506 

(y)  Crucifixion  with  Christ  .....  507 

§  VI.  Love  of  Christ  the  New  Law        .....      508-514 

1.  Love  native  to  man  ;  poets  sing  of  a  love  that  is  dead  ; 

but  the  love  of  Christ  never  faileth       ....     508 

2.  It  is  as  sufficient  for  its  work  as  are  the  forces  of  Nature 

for  theirs        .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .     5 1  \ 

3.  The  love  of  Christ  necessary  to  the  service  of  man       .     513 

PART    III 

THE  RELIGION  OF  CHRIST  AND    THE  IDEAL   OF 
RELIGION 

INTRODUCTORY 

i.  Nature  of  syncretism 517 

ii.  Christianity  not  a  syncretism,  but  the  result  of  an  archi- 
tectonic idea          518 

iii.  Action  of  this  idea  upon  the  religion        .        .        .        .519 

CHAPTER    I 

THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST  AND  THE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  RELIGION    520-535 
§  I.   The  Problems  to  be  Solved      ......      520-523 

1.  The  people  through  which  the  universal  religion  must 

live  ;  how  are  local  forces  to  be  overcome? .         .         .520 

2.  The  people  must  be  created,  though  out  of  virgin  soil    .     521 
§11.    The  Social  Ideal  of  Jesus       ......      523-526 

1.  His  Ideal  the  Kingdom  of  God       .....     523 

2.  The  ideal  ethical,  yet  religious 525 


CONTENTS  xxvii 

r.\f,K 

III.    The  Social  Method  of  Jesus  an  i  its  Impersonation      .     527-532 

1.  The    method    discipleship  ;    the   vision    of    Jesus    still 

potent  after  His  death 527 

2.  Possible  alternatives        .......     529 

3.  His  person  His  embodied  ideal  ;  His  society  His  articu- 

lated Person 531 

§  IV.  Positive  Religions  and  Christ's  Religion       .         .         .      532-535 

1.  Christianity  a  personal,  not  a  positive  religion        .         .     532 

2.  Christ's  spiritual  sovereignty 533 

3.  Characteristics  of  His  social  ideal 534 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  IDFAL  RELIGION  AND  THE  IDEA  OF  GOD        .        .        .     536-550 
§1.   Tiie  Idea  of  God  in  Religion    ......      536-539 

1.  Summary  of  the  previous  argument         ....     536 

2.  Immortality     of    religious     beliefs  ;    difficulty    of    the 

advance  to  ethical  monotheism  .....  537 
§11.  God  Interpreted  through  Christ  .....  539~54i 
§111.  The  Christian  Idea  Makes  for  Universal  Ideals  .  541-547 

1.  The  idea  of  God  dissociated  from  a  tribe  and  attached 

to  a  Person 541 

2.  The  correspondent   change   in   the  idea  of  God  ;    His 

universal  Fatherhood    .......     542 

3.  Change  in  the  idea  of  man  ;    the  value  of  the  unit  and 

unity  of  the  Race  ........     544 

§  IV.    77ie  Condition  of  Realization        .         .         .         .         .         .548 

i    The  idea  of  Christianity  appropriated  by  Faith      .         .     548 
2.   The  idea  of  Faith  specially  characteristic  of  Christian- 
ity ;  what  Christ  has  done  for  religion          .         .      548-550 

CHAPTER    III 

THE  IDEAL  RELIGION  AND  WORSHIP 551-568 

§1.  Place  as  it  Affects  Worship     .          .         .         .         .         -551-557 

1.  Holy  places  ;  how  they  externalize  and  localize  worship     551 

2.  Religions  universal  in  idea  limited  by  place  ;  Judaism 

and  Islam      .          .          .          .          .          .          .          .          -554 

3.  The  emancipation  from  place  achieved  by  Christ  ;  ho\v 

the  ideal  may  be  carnalized  .  .  .  .  .  -555 
§  II.  The  Institution  as  it  Affects  Worship  ....  ^57-560 

1.  The  Institution  and  the  idea  of  God        ....     557 

2.  How  it  affects  religion      .         .         .         .         .         .         .5,8 


xxviii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§111.  Christ  the  Only  Institution  for  Christian  Worship     .      560-564 

1.  His  Person  conceived  in  the  New   Testament  as  an 

institution      .........     560 

2.  i.  Christ's   sole    sufficiency   the   cardinal    fact   of  the 

Christian  religion 561 

ii.  The  Eucharist   not   worship,  but  a  means  of  com- 
munion      562 

iii.  Preaching  in  relation  to  worship         ....  563 

iv.  The  new  institution  founded  by  God  not  man    .        .  562 

v.  The  institution  defines  the  worshipper         .         .         .  563 

vi.  Its  ultimate  end  the  glory  of  God        ....  564 

§  IV.  Conclusion 564-568 

1.  The  failure  in  the  ethical  interpretation  of  Christ  the 

Church's  gravest  heresy 564 

2.  The  place  of  Christ  in  universal  history  corresponds  to 

the  belief  in  His  Person 566 


THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE 
CHRISTIAN    RELIGION 


INTRODUCTION 

THE    PROBLEM    OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    RELIGION 


KO.L   auros  €<TTIV  TT/OO  TravTcov,   /cat  TO,  Travra  ev  avrw 

— CW.  i.   17 

Tolle  deum  a  creatura,  et  remanet  nihil. — NICOLAS  OF  CUSA. 

Gott  ist  das  Herz  oder  Quellbrunn  der  Natur,  aus  ihm  riihret  alles 
her. 

Du  musst  nicht  denken,  dass  der  Sohn  ein  andrer  Gott  sei  als  der 
Vater,  dass  er  ausser  dem  Vater  stehe,  wie  wenn  zwei  Manner  neben 
einander  stehen.  Der  Vater  ist  der  Quellbrunn  aller  Krafte,  und  alle 
Krafte  sind  in  einander  wie  eine  Kraft,  darum  heisst  er  auch  einiger 
Gott.  Der  Sohn  ist  das  Herz  in  dem  Vater,  das  Herz  oder  der  Kern 
in  alien  Kraften  des  Vaters.  Von  dem  Sohne  steiget  auf  die  evvige 
himmlische  Freude,  quellend  in  alien  Kraften  des  Vaters,  eine  Freude 
die  kein  Auge  gesehen  und  kein  Ohr  gehort  hat. — JACOB  BoHME. 

Glaube  ist  die  Abschattung  des  gottlichen  Wissens  und  Wollens  in 
dem  endlichen  Geiste  des  Menschen. — JACOBI. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE    PROBLEM   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN    RELIGION 

§   1.      The  Person  of  Christ  as  the  Mystery  of  the  Christian 

Religion 

I.  I  ^  VERY  reader  of  recent  theological  literature  is  fami- 
JQ>  liar  with  the  remarkable  contrast  between  the  image 
of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels  and  the  conception  of  Christ  in  the 
oecumenical  creeds.  It  represents  a  change  which  time  cannot 
measure  or  place  explain.  The  Council  of  Nicaea  stands  as 
nearly  as  possible  at  a  distance  of  three  hundred  years  from 
the  death  of  Jesus,  while  the  interval  between  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon  and  the  latest  of  the  Gospels  is  at  most  three 
centuries  and  a  half.  But  years  and  even  centuries  cannot 
describe  the  difference  between  the  simple  lines  in  which  the 
Evangelists  draw  the  historical  portrait  of  Jesus  and  the 
metaphysical  terms  in  which  Nicaea  defines  the  person  of  the 
Son  and  His  relation  to  the  Father,  or  Chalcedon  distin- 
guishes the  natures  and  delimits  their  provinces  and  relations. 
On  the  one  hand  we  have  the  Son  of  man  "  meek  and  lowly 
in  heart";  humble  in  birth,  obscure  in  life;  "despised  and 
rejected  of  men,"  disbelieved  by  the  priests  and  rulers, 
companying  with  publicans  and  sinners;  "crucified  under 
Pontius  Pilate";  forsaken  in  death  by  His  disciples,  and 
follo\ved  to  the  grave  by  only  a  few  women,  who  were 
too  mean  to  be  heeded  by  His  enemies,  and  who  but 
loved  Him  the  more  that  He  had  suffered  so  much.  On 


4  BY   THE   MYSTERY   RELIGION 

the  other  hand  we  have  the  Son  "  consubstantial  with  the 
Father,"  "  begotten,  not  made,"  "  very  God  of  very  God  "  ;  we 
have  a  Person  composed  of  two  distinct  natures,  which  must 
neither  be  divided  nor  confused ;  for  how  could  convertible 
natures  be  opposed  ?  or  how,  if  they  were  separable,  could 
there  be  a  real  and  enduring  personal  unity  ?  If  we 
attempt,  first,  to  look  through  the  eyes  of  the  Evangelists, 
and,  next,  to  think  in  the  categories  of  the  Councils,  we 
shall  feel  as  bewildered  as  if  we  had  been  suddenly  trans- 
ported from  a  serene  and  lucid  atmosphere  to  a  land  of 
double  vision  and  half-lights,  where  men  take  shadows  for 
substantial  things. 

Yet  the  two  moments  are  too  organically  related  to  be 
characterized  and  dismissed  in  a  series  of  contrasts.  They 
are  bound  together  by  a  dialectical  process  which  has  only 
to  be  understood  to  turn  their  antithesis  into  a  synthesis; 
and  in  this  synthesis  the  opposed  elements  appear  to 
coalesce  and  become  indissoluble,  the  later  conserving  the 
earlier  belief,  the  earlier  vivifying  the  later.  For  if  we  may 
reason  from  the  processes  of  collective  experience  to  law  in 
history,  we  may  say  that  two  things  are  certain,  viz.  (a) 
that  without  the  personal  charm  of  the  historical  Jesus  the 
oecumenical  creeds  would  never  have  been  either  formulated 
or  tolerated  ;  and  (/3)  without  the  metaphysical  conception 
of  Christ  the  Christian  religion  would  long  ago  have  ceased 
to  live.  Clear  and  sweet  as  the  Galilasan  vision  may  be,  it 
would,  apart  from  the  severer  speculation  which  translated 
it  from  a  history  into  a  creed,  have  faded  from  human 
memory  like  a  dream  which  delighted  the  light  slumbers  of 
the  morning,  though  only  to  be  so  dissolved  before  the 
strenuous  will  of  the  day  as  to  be  impossible  of  recall.  The 
religion  which  makes  its  appeal  to  the  sense  of  the  beautiful, 
and  speaks  to  the  fancy  in  legends,  or  to  the  imagination  in 
symbols,  may  do  well  for  a  season  or  while  a  special  mood 
continues  ;  but  only  the  religion  which  addresses  and  exer- 


MAKES   ITS  APPEAL   TO   REASON  5 

cises  the  reason  will  continue  to  live.  To  say  that  the  article 
of  faith  which  the  intellect  finds  the  hardest  to  construe  may 
be  the  most  necessary  to  the  life  of  the  religion,  is  to  state 
a  sober  truth  and  no  mere  paradox.  This  does  not  mean 
that  the  heart  has  to  be  satisfied  at  the  expense  of  the  head  ; 
it  means  the  very  opposite,  viz.,  that  unless  religion  be  an 
eternal  challenge  to  the  reason  it  can  have  no  voice  for 
the  imagination,  and  no  value  for  the  heart.  The  symbol 
is  only  a  thing  of  sense,  most  valued  where  it  has  dis- 
placed the  ideal  and  become  the  sole  reality ;  but  the 
mysteries  which  compose  the  atmosphere  in  which  all 
truth  lives,  are  too  inseparable  from  thought  to  be  absent 
from  religion.  The  pure  reason  has  its  antinomies,  but  the 
very  ideas  it  so  describes  may  be  said  to  be  the  laws 
which  bind  together  mind  and  nature,  which  make  a 
rational  experience  possible,  and  which  set  the  personal 
intellect  in  the  midst  of  an  intelligible  system.  The  faith, 
therefore,  that  had  no  mysteries  would  be  an  anomaly 
in  a  universe  like  ours ;  and  would  suffer  from  the  in- 
curable defects  of  being  a  faith  without  truth  and  without 
the  capability  of  so  appealing  to  reason  as  to  promote 
man's  rational  and  moral  growth.  For  in  the  degree  that 
a  religion  did  not  tax  thought  it  would  not  develop  mind  ; 
it  is  the  problems  which  most  imperiously  appeal  to  the 
reason  for  solution  which  open  those  glimpses  into  the 
secret  of  the  universe  that  most  fascinate  the  heart  and 
awe  the  imagination.  And  the  Person  of  Christ  is  exactly 
the  point  in  the  Christian  religion  where  the  intellect  feels 
overwhelmed  by  mysteries  it  cannot  resolve,  yet  where 
Christian  experience  finds  the  factors  of  its  most  character- 
istic qualities,  and  the  Church  the  truth  it  has  lived  by 
and  is  bound  to  live  for. 

2.  But  mysteries  are  of  two  sorts:  they  may  either  be  things 
of  nature,  or  creations  of  the  art  of  man.  The  mysteries  of 
nature  are  universal,  and  are  known  to  man  in  every  place 


6  THE   MYSTERIES   OF  NATURE 

and  in  all  stages  of  his  culture,  though  their  forms  are  many 
and  most  varied  ;  but  the  mysteries  of  art  are  a  vaster  and 
more  mixed  multitude,  occasional  in  origin,  partial  in  distri- 
bution, living  and  increasing  at  one  stage  of  culture,  diminish- 
ing and  dying  at  another.  The  faculty  which  sees  and  feels 
the  mysteries  of  nature  is  the  reason,  and  the  more  rational  or 
conscious  it  grows  the  more  does  it  realize  their  burden  and 
their  impenetrability  to  mortal  sight.  But  the  art  which 
makes  mysteries  is  not  so  much  conscious  as  spontaneous 
in  its  operation  ;  and  shows  itself  in  the  skill  with  which  it 
blends  the  fantastic  with  the  real,  and  out  of  the  impossible 
weaves  the  very  texture  of  life.  The  mysteries  of  the  reason 
are  the  problems  of  philosophy :  this  world,  who  made  it, 
and  how  was  it  made  ?  Our  rational  experience,  how  is  it 
possible?  Is  it  created  by  what  man  brings  to  nature,  or  by 
the  action  of  nature  upon  man  ?  What  are  Space  and  Time  ? 
Are  they  forms  of  perception  or  are  they  outside  things,  which, 
through  association  and  sense,  impress  themselves  upon  the 
mind  ?  What  is  Mind  and  what  Matter  ?  Are  they  two,  or 
are  they  one,  in  aspect  different,  in  essence  the  same  ?  Is  there 
such  a  thing  as  Will  in  the  universe  and  Freedom  in  man,  or 
does  fixed  fate  govern  all  ?  If  Necessity  reigns,  how  is  the 
illusion  of  Freedom  to  be  explained  ?  If  Freedom  reigns, 
how  are  the  uniformities  of  Nature  and  the  order  of  History 
to  be  understood  ?  These  are  questions  man  cannot  escape  : 
art  has  had  nothing  to  do  with  their  making,  or  time  with 
their  origin  or  end  ;  for  they  are  involved  in  the  very  pro- 
cesses of  the  intellect,  and  they  grow  at  once  more  impera- 
tive and  more  complex  with  the  progress  of  knowledge. 

But  the  other  order  of  mysteries  bears  rather  the  tool-marks 
of  made  or  manufactured  articles,  and  have  not  the  stamp  of 
the  inevitable  which  belongs  to  the  work  of  nature.  They 
may  be  the  creations  of  Tradition  or  of  the  Schools,  made  by 
the  hand  which  reveres  the  past  too  much  to  change  the 
forms  of  its  beliefs  even  where  their  substance  has  perished  ; 


AND   THE   MYSTERIES   OF   ART  7 

or  by  the  master  whose  ki  ful  subtlety  has  shaped  formulae 
which  later  men  may  accept  but  dare  not  question.  They 
may  be  but  the  fantastic  shapes  of  an  old  mythology  frozen 
and  sterilized  by  the  cold  breath  of  the  understanding,  which 
loves  to  deal  with  the  fluid  forms  of  poetry  as  if  they  were 
stiff  and  pedantic  prose  ;  or  they  may  be  speculative  inter- 
pretations of  historical  persons  and  events,  translating  them 
into  figures  in  a  new  mythology  which  is  all  the  more 
audacious  that  it  is  a  creation  of  the  logical  intellect,  and  not, 
like  the  old,  of  the  concrete  imagination.  Of  this  sort  are 
mysteries  which  all  religions  have  been  rich  in,  and  which 
none  seems  to  be  able  to  live  without.  Hinduism  transmutes 
the  epic  hero  Krishna  into  an  incarnation  of  deity ;  Buddhism 
makes  out  of  its  founder  a  being  with  more  infinite  capabili- 
ties of  change  and  action  than  any  god;  Zoroastrianism  turns 
the  phenomena  of  day  and  night  into  the  terms  of  an  ethical 
dualism  and  personalizes  eternity ;  Islam  so  magnifies  its 
Koran  that  it  experiences  a  kind  of  apotheosis  and  becomes 
an  uncreated  Word,  which  had  no  beginning  and  can  have  no 
end,  and  which  found  manifestation  but  not  origin  through 

o  o 

the  mouth  of  the  prophet.  These  are  examples  of  the  mys- 
teries which  art  makes  in  religion,  and  which  are  in  their  own 
order  more  intricate  and  invincible  than  any  of  the  creations 
of  the  mythical  imagination. 

§    II.     Need  the  Person  be  a  Alystcry? 

I.  Now,  to  which  order  of  mystery  does  the  doctrine  as  to 
the  Person  of  Christ  belong?  Is  it  a  thing  of  nature?  or  is 
it  a  made  or  manufactured  article,  a  myth,  which  the  logical 
intellect  has  woven  out  of  the  material  offered  by  a  simple 
but  beautiful  historv  ?  It  were  ccrtainlv  easy  so  to  represent 
it,  and  to  urge  that  bv  so  doing  we  should  relieve  religion 
from  an  oppressive  dogma,  and  religious  thought  from  a 
problem  which  always  perplexes,  and  even  bewilders,  the 


8  THE   INCARNATION   OF  THE   WORD 

intellect,  if  it  does  not  provoke  it  to  disdainful  denial.  There 
is,  as  we  have  said,  in  this  case,  a  sort  of  infinite  incom- 
mensurability between  the  historical  person  and  its  theologi- 
cal construction  ;  the  one  is  so  simple,  so  natural,  so  like  a 
child  of  His  time  and  people ;  while  the  other  is  such  a  mass 
of  intricate  complexities,  as  it  were  a  synthesis  of  all  the  in- 
credibilities with  which  religion  has  ever  loved  to  shock  and 
offend  the  reason.  The  spontaneous  impulse  of  the  intellect, 
therefore,  when  it  first  comes  face  to  face  with  the  modest 
premisses  and  the  stupendous  conclusion,  is  to  attempt  to 
divorce  them,  and  to  conceive  Jesus  as  real,  and  the  deified 
Christ  as  the  product  of  idealization.  And  this  attempt 
may  be  cogently  justified  by  both  thought  and  criticism. 
If  we  begin  with  thought,  we  may  represent  its  process  of 
analysis  and  argument  somewhat  thus  : 

'  The  doctrine  that  affirms  that  Jesus  was  "  God  manifest 
in  the  flesh,"  or,  in  other  words,  that  in  Christ  the  natures  of 
God  and  man  were  so  united  as  to  form  a  single  and  in- 
divisible person,  is  the  very  apotheosis  of  the  inconceivable. 
God  is  a  Being  too  transcendental  to  be  either  known  or 
rationally  conceived  ;  but  man  is  a  child  of  nature  and  ex- 
perience :  how,  then,  can  we  attach  any  idea  to  the  words 
which  affirm  a  union  of  these  two  ? — of  the  God  who  tran- 
scends our  experience,  and  of  the  Man  who  is  its  most 
familiar  factor  and  object?  But  suppose  it  be  granted  that 
both  ideas  are  alike  real,  is  it  any  more  possible  to  conceive 
them  as  so  united  as  to  constitute  an  historical  person  ?  The 
incarnation  of  God  in  all  men,  the  manifestation  of  the 
Creator  in  the  whole  of  the  race  He  had  created,  might  be 
an  arguable  position  ;  but  not  its  rigorous  and  exclusive 
individuation,  or  restriction  to  a  single  person  out  of  all  the 
infinite  multitude  of  millions  who  have  lived,  are  living,  or 
are  to  live.  God  and  man  are  too  incompatible  in  their 
attributes  to  be  conceived  as  co-ordinated  in  a  Being  who 


AS   A   MADE   MYSTERY  9 

appears  on  the  stage  of  history  as  a  human  individual,  and 
who  has  the  experiences  and  suffers  the  fate  proper  to  one. 
The  man  cannot  become  God,  for  man  is  mortal  and  finite 
God  eternal  and  infinite ;  and  it  does  not  lie  even  with  the 
Almighty  to  invest  temporal  being  with  the  attributes  of  the 
eternal.  Nor  can  God  become  a  man  any  more  than  His 
eternity  can  be  annihilated  or  His  infinitude  cancelled  or 
curtailed.  To  attempt  to  conceive  God  creating  another 
God,  or  ceasing  to  be  the  God  He  is,  were  to  attempt  a  feat 
which  is  impossible  to  reason.  Then  if  the  union  is  effected 
by  God  remaining  God,  and  the  man  a  man,  what  sort  of 
being  is  the  resultant  person  ?  Nay,  is  he,  in  any  toler- 
able sense,  a  person  at  all  ?  Is  he  not  rather  a  mere  symbol 
of  contradictory  ideas,  as  it  were  qualities  which  thought 
refuses  to  relate,  and  is  therefore  unable  to  unite,  personalized 
and  made  into  an  everlasting  enigma  ? 

'  The  matter  is  not  illumined,  but  rather  darkened,  by 
definition  and  explanation.  The  union  has  been  defined 
as  personal,  and  again  as  between  a  concrete,  i.e.  a  divine 
person,  the  Son  of  God,  and  an  abstract,  i.e.  human  nature 
before  it  had  taken  shape  in  a  personal  man.  But  what 
is  union  in  a  person  save  a  conscious  unity,  being  realized 
and  made  homogeneous  in  the  unity  of  a  rational  con- 
sciousness ?  But  is  not  the  very  note  of  this  case  the 
double  consciousness  where  the  person  knows  himself  now 
as  God  and  now  as  man ;  or,  what  is  still  less  rationally 
conceivable,  as  living  a  veiled  and  double  life,  where  he 
speaks  and  acts  as  man,  while  he  consciously  possesses 
the  omniscience  and  power  of  God?  To  a  life  lived  under 
such  conditions,  what  reality,  what  integrity  or  veracity, 
could  be  said  to  belong?  And  as  used  here,  are  not  the 
terms  "nature"  and  "person"  simply  the  catch-words  of  a 
juggler?  When  the  speech  is  of  God,  He  is  described  as  three 
persons  in  one  nature  ;  when  it  is  of  Christ,  he  is  represented 
as  two  natures  in  one  person.  In  the  former  case  the  persons 


io     HISTORICAL   CRITICISM  EXPLAINS   JESUS 

are  plural,  but  the  nature  singular,  and  the  argument  is 
based  on  the  position  that  unity  belongs  to  nature  and  differ- 
ence to  person.  But  in  the  latter  case  the  person  is  singular 
and  the  natures  plural,  and  the  argument  proceeds  on  the 
premiss  that  unity  belongs  to  the  person  and  difference  to 
the  natures.  Apply  to  Christ  the  conception  of  nature  or 
substance  as  it  is  predicated  of  the  Godhead,  and  the  unity 
is  dissolved,  because  the  natures  become  personalized  ;  apply 
to  the  Godhead  the  idea  of  person  as  used  of  Christ,  and  the 
argument  for  the  divinity  loses  all  its  force,  because  unity 
of  nature  is  no  longer  necessary  to  the  personal  integrity. 
It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  a  doctrine  which  can  so  little 
stand  the  criticism  of  the  reason  is  a  manufactured  mystery, 
made  by  the  art  and  craft  of  man,  not  by  the  solemn  and 
inexorable  necessities  of  thought,  as  conditioned  and  con- 
fronted by  a  universe  which  it  must  interpret  in  order  that 
it  may  continue  to  be.' 

2.  In  some  such  manner,  then,  the  understanding,  by 
means  of  its  keen  and  dexterous  logic,  might  argue  that  the 
Incarnation  was  a  mere  fictitious  or  artificial  mystery,  signifi- 
cant only  of  the  extravagances  of  the  ecstatic  or  dogmatic 
mind,  without  any  significance  for  the  saner  reason.  And 
if  we  proceed  from  the  destructive  dialectic  of  thought  to 
the  analytic  process  of  literary  and  historical  criticism,  we 
may  find  the  fatal  cycle  completed  somewhat  thus  : 

'  Literary  analysis  enables  us  to  discover  a  primary  and 
a  secondary  stratum  in  the  Gospels.  Jesus,  as  he  is  pre- 
sented in  the  primary  or  original  document,  is  a  real  and 
tangible  enough  figure,  capable  of  easy  and  complete 
historical  explanation.  He  is  the  last  of  the  prophets 
of  Israel,  ethical  as  they  all  were,  but  sweeter  in  character 
and  in  speech  than  they  had  been,  larger  and  more  reason- 
able in  mind,  as  became  one  who  lived  under  the  influence 


11 

of  Rome  and  its  universal  ideas.  This  gives  the  source  of 
His  most  distinctive  teaching.  Hebrew  literature — Canonical, 
Apocryphal,  Talmudical — supplied  the  matter  ;  the  spirit  of 
the  time  determined  the  form.  His  God  is  the  Jehovah  of 
the  Old  Testament,  though  sublimed  and  subdued  to  the 
likeness  of  his  own  genial  nature.  His  idea  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  the  common  prophetic  belief,  though  adapted  and 
enlarged  by  the  genius  of  humanity  within  him.  His  notion 
of  the  Son  of  man  comes,  partly,  from  Daniel,  and,  partly, 
from  Enoch.  His  conception  of  the  suffering  Messiah  was 
directly  suggested  by  Isaiah's  Servant  of  God.  In  the 
Psalms  can  be  found  his  ideas  that  the  true  worship  of  the 
Father  is  to  be  not  by  sacrifice  and  ceremonial,  but  in 
spirit  and  in  truth,  by  men  of  clean  hands  and  contrite 
hearts.  His  notion  that  God's  people  are  the  pure  and  holy 
in  spirit  came  from  Jeremiah.  His  doctrine  of  repentance 
was  Ezekiel's.  His  idea  of  God's  forbearance  with  the 
wicked  and  desire  to  save  them  only  repeated  and  expanded 
Hosea's.  His  ethical  temper  was  inspired  by  the  Books 
of  the  Hebrew  Wisdom  and  their  Apocryphal  successors. 
Some  of  his  individual  and  most  characteristic  precepts, 
such  as  the  love  of  one's  neighbour,  or  the  law  of  reciprocity, 
were  commonplaces  in  the  Jewish  schools,  certain  to  be 
frequent  on  the  lips  of  men  who  loved  learning  and  revered 
the  rabbi.  And  as  he  has  his  antecedents  in  Israel,  so  has 
the  literature  which  preserves  his  memory.  The  Gospels 
are  the  creations  of  men  who  knew  the  Old  Testament,  and 
found  again  its  most  miraculous  histories  in  the  life  of  him 
who  had  in  their  eyes  fulfilled  it.  The  things  that  were 
possible  to  Moses,  the  wonders  that  had  been  worked  by 
Elijah,  the  translation  of  Enoch,  the  deliverance  accorded 
to  Jonah,  were  occurrences  which  the  regretful  admiration 
of  simple-minded  disciples  could  not  refuse  to  ascribe  to 
him  whom  they  had  come  to  conceive  as  the  most  marvel- 
lous and  winsome  of  the  sons  of  men. 


12     THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  GOSPELS 

'  The  secondary  stratum  in  the  Gospels  has  thus  been 
formed  by  the  very  same  influences  that  shaped  the  figure 
which  is  embedded  in  the  primary.  The  associations  created 
by  the  only  literature  which  their  authors  knew,  made  at  once 
the  atmosphere  through  which  they  saw  Jesus,  the  attributes 
in  which  they  arrayed  him,  and  the  categories  under  which  he 
was  conceived.  Hence  came  the  miracles  which  they  ascribed 
to  him,  his  supernatural  birth,  his  sacrificial  death,  and  the 
ascension  which  translated  him  from  a  guilty  world  to  the 
right  hand  of  God.  In  a  word,  their  imaginations,  touched 
by  the  enthusiasm  of  an  all-believing  love,  became  creative  ; 
and,  losing  the  very  power  to  distinguish  between  the  things 
that  had  happened  and  the  things  that  might,  or  rather  that 
ought  to,  have  happened,  they  saw  Jesus  as  if  he  had  been 
the  Messiah  they  had  hoped  he  was.  They  dreamed  in  the 
language  of  the  Messianic  hope,  and  when  they  attempted 
to  describe  him,  their  dreams  so  mingled  with  the  realities 
that  the  realities  partook  of  the  idealism  of  the  dreams,  and 
the  dreams  absorbed  the  realism  of  the  realities.  Thus  by 
a  perfectly  natural  process  one  who  had  been  in  actual  life 
a  Hebrew  peasant,  though  indeed  a  peasant  of  superlative 
genius,  supernal  goodness,  and  ineffable  charm,  came  to 
wear  to  the  imagination  a  divine  hue  and  form  ;  and  once 
this  had  been  achieved  for  him  it  needed  only  the  fearless 
logic  of  a  metaphysical  but  unscientific  age  to  identify  him 
with  Deity  and  resolve  his  humanity  by  the  incarnation 
of  the  son  of  God.' 

§   III.      Why  tJiere  is  a  Problem  of  the  Person 

I.  But  now  what  precisely  is  this  double  argument  of 
rational  logic  and  analytical  criticism  worth?  Is  it  not 
cogent  simply  because  it  is  narrow  ?  The  conclusion  of  the 
dialectic  is  invincible  for  the  reason  that  it  started  from  an 
inarticulated  premiss.  The  rational  problem  is  not  so  simple 


THE   PROBLEM  OF   UNIVERSAL  HISTORY      13 

as  the  argument  assumed,  for  the  facts  to  be  co-ordinated 
and  the  ideas  to  be  construed  are  infinitely  more  complex 
than  the  premiss  was  allowed  to  state  or  to  suggest.  The 
dexterous  logician  is  not  the  only  strong  intellect  which  has 
tried  to  handle  the  doctrine.  The  contradictions  which  he 
translates  into  rational  incredibilities  must  either  have 
escaped  the  analysis  of  men  like  Augustine  or  Aquinas,  or 
have  been  by  their  thought  transcended  and  reconciled  in 
some  higher  synthesis.  It  is  a  wholesome  thing  to  remember 
that  the  men  who  elaborated  our  theologies  were  at  least  as 
rational  as  their  critics,  and  that  we  owe  it  to  historical 
truth  to  look  at  their  beliefs  with  their  eyes. 

And  as  with  the  dialectical,  so  with  the  critical  process  : 
the  two  are  related  by  having  a  common  premiss ;  and 
if  it  be  insufficient  or  invalid  in  the  one  case,  it  cannot  be 
beyond  question  in  the  other.  Thus  it  is  possible  that 
the  secondary  element  in  the  Gospels  may  be  due  rather 
to  intellectual  prevision  than  to  imaginative  reminiscence. 
We  have  not  solved,  we  have  not  even  stated  and  defined, 
the  problem  as  to  the  person  of  Christ  when  we  have 
written  the  life  of  Jesus,  for  that  problem  is  raised  even 
less  by  the  Gospels  than  by  Christ's  place  and  function  in 
the  collective  history  of  man  ;  or,  to  be  more  correct,  by 
the  life  described  in  the  Gospels  and  the  phenomena  repre- 
sented by  universal  history  viewed  in  their  reciprocal  and 
interpretative  inter-relations.  If  the  Gospels  stood  alone, 
the  problem  would  be  comparatively  simple  ;  indeed,  there 
would  hardly  be  anything  worth  calling  a  problem,  for  they 
are  concerned  with  events  which  happened  in  time,  and  with 
an  historical  figure  whose  antecedents,  emergence,  circum- 
stances, behaviour,  experiences,  fate,  words,  are  exactly  the 
sort  of  material  biography  loves  to  handle.  But  the  very 
essence  of  the  matter  is  that  the  Gospels  do  not  stand 
alone,  but  live,  as  it  were,  embosomed  in  universal  history. 
And  in  that  history  Christ  plays  a  part  much  more  re- 


14  WHAT   CREATED   CHRISTIANITY 

markable  and  much  less  compatible  with  common  manhood 
than  the  part  Jesus  plays  in  the  history  of  His  own  age  and 
people.  And  we  have  not  solved,  or  even  apprehended,  any 
one  of  the  problems  connected  with  His  person  until  we 
have  resolved  the  mystery  of  the  place  He  has  filled  and 
the  things  He  has  achieved  in  the  collective  life  of  man. 

2.  We  have  granted  that  it  were  an  easy  thing  to  construe 
the  life  of  Jesus,  isolated  from  its  historical  context,  in  the 
terms  of  a  severe  naturalism  ;  indeed,  the  ease  with  which 
it  can  be  done  makes  it  the  first  temptation  of  the  intellect, 
which  is  as  naturally  indolent  as  it  is  instinctively  audacious. 
But  suppose  our  rigorous  naturalism  has  done  its  work, 
what  then  ?  Why,  we  have  come  face  to  face  with  a  new 
problem,  which  may  well  seem  all  the  more  mysteriously 
insoluble  that  our  naturalism  is  courageous  and  complete. 
For  Christ  has  to  be  fitted  into  our  scheme  of  things,  and  we 
have  to  explain  (i)  How  He  whom  we  have  resolved  into  a 
mere  Jewish  peasant,  came  to  be  arrayed  in  the  most  extra- 
ordinary attributes  which  were  ever  made  to  clothe  mortal 
man  ;  (2)  how  His  historical  action  has  corresponded  to  His 
fictitious  rather  than  to  His  real  character ;  and  (3)  what 
sort  of  blind  accident  or  ironical  indifference  to  right  can 
reign  in  a  universe  which  has  allowed  to  fiction  greater 
powers  than  have  been  granted  to  truth.  The  question  does 
not  relate  simply  to  the  apotheosis  of  Jesus  ;  that  is  a  pro- 
cess which  the  indolent  intellect,  if  it  be  also  ingenious,  can 
facilely  describe.  We  admit  that  the  process  may  be  stated 
in  terms  of  such  amazing  verisimilitude  as  to  turn  it  into  a 
cogent  probability.  The  question  becomes  urgent  only  when 
the  deificatory  process  has  been  completed.  The  deification, 
if  we  may  so  call  it,  though  the  term  is  radically  incorrect, 
has  all  the  effect  of  the  most  finely  calculated  purpose  formed 
after  all  the  needs  of  man  and  the  whole  course  of  his  his- 
tory have  been  considered.  There  is  nothing  in  nature  or  art 
that  can  so  well  illustrate  design  or  adaptation  to  an  end. 


ILLUSION   OR   WHAT?  15 

And  though  it  be  illusory,  yet  it  works  not  as  illusion,  but  as 
truth,  and  for  it,  in  a  most  miraculous  way ;  true  men  receive 
it,  are  made  truer  by  it,  so  use  it  as  to  build  the  world  up  in 
the  love  and  pursuit  of  the  truth  as  it  had  never  been  built  up 
before.  As  unconscious  fiction  it  is  as  void  of  substance  as 
a  dream,  yet  it  acts  upon  humanity  as  if  it  were  the  most 
substantial  good  which  had  ever  descended  upon  it  out  of 
heaven.  And  how,  by  what  right,  at  whose  instance,  did 
this  thing,  the  apotheosis  of  the  obscure,  happen  ?  For  it  is 
the  apotheosis  which  has  proved  the  real  or  substantive  factor 
of  change.  It  is  not  Jesus  of  Nazareth  who  has  so  power- 
fully entered  into  history  ;  it  is  the  deified  Christ  who  has 
been  believed,  loved,  and  obeyed  as  the  Saviour  of  the  world. 
The  act  or  process  of  apotheosis,  then,  created  the  Chris- 
tian religion  ;  and  who  was  responsible  for  it?  If  the  imagi- 
native peasants  of  Galilee,  they  were  doing  a  deed  no  less 
wonderful  than  the  creation  of  the  world,  and  the  power  or 
providence  which  allowed  them  to  do  it  was  consenting  by 
fiction  and  make-believe  to  govern  reason  and  form  character. 
But  what  kind  of  reflexion  is  it  upon  the  Maker  and 
Master  of  the  universe  if  we  conceive  Him  as  consenting  to 
do  this  thing?  Nay,  in  what  sort  of  light  does  it  set  reason 
if  we  imagine  it  capable  of  being  so  deluded  and  deceived, 
seduced  to  martyrdom  or  compelled  to  enthusiasm  by  a 
mistake?  Indeed,  if  the  doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ 
were  explicable  as  the  mere  mythical  apotheosis  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  it  would  become  the  most  insolent  and  fateful 
anomaly  in  history.  For  it  could  not  stand  alone  ;  it  would 
affect  all  thought  and  all  objects  of  thought.  "  Here,"  men 
would  say,  "  a  mere  chapter  of  accidents  has  made  one  of  the 
meanest  figures  in  literature  the  most  potent  person  of  all 
time,  the  source  of  a  series  of  illusions  which  have  exercised 
the  most  transcendent  influence  upon  the  life  and  destinies 
of  men.  If  accident  and  illusion  have  played  such  a  part  in 
history,  what  character  must  we  attribute  to  the  power  which 


16  CHRIST   IS  IN  HISTORY 

rules  the  world  ?  Order  in  nature  is  an  insignificant  idea 
compared  with  the  idea  of  order  in  history ;  but  how  can 
there  be  an  order  if  the  persons  who  create  it  be,  in  the  very 
degree  that  they  are  potent,  themselves  the  mere  creatures  of 
chance,  or  of  worse  than  chance,  fiction  and  pure  phantasy?" 

3.  We  may  say,  then,  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Person  of 
Christ  is  no  mere  theory  concerning  an  historical  individual 
with  whose  biography  we  are  all  familiar.  On  the  contrary, 
its  attributes  are  those  in  an  even  higher  degree  of  a  symbol 
than  of  a  fact,  though  of  a  symbol  which  owes  all  its  reality 
to  its  being  fact  transfigured  and  sublimed.  In  other  words, 
Christ's  person  is  even  more  intellectually  real  than  histori- 
cally actual,  i.e.  it  does  not  simply  denote  a  figure  which 
once  appeared  under  the  conditions  of  space  and  time,  but  it 
also  stands  for  a  whole  order  of  thought,  a  way  of  regarding 
the  universe,  of  conceiving  God  and  man  in  themselves  and 
in  their  mutual  relations.  Its  interpretation,  therefore,  is  not 
a  problem  in  mere  formal  logic  or  limited  literary  criticism  ; 
but  touches  at  once  facts  of  history  and  the  ultimate  mys- 
teries of  being.  We  may,  then,  make  here  a  perfunctory 
distinction,  and  say  that  it  raises  two  series  of  questions  : 
historical  or  literary,  and  speculative  or  philosophical.  The 
historical  problem  is  threefold,  concerned,  first,  with  the  life 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth ;  secondly,  with  the  process  by  which 
the  thought  of  His  people  regarding  Him  developed  from 
the  synoptic  Gospels  into  the  conceptions  that  needed  for 
their  expression  the  formulae  of  the  oecumenical  creeds  ;  and, 
thirdly,  with  the  mode  in  which  the  Person  as  represented 
in  the  history  and  interpreted  in  the  doctrine  has  created  a 
religion  which  has  absorbed  the  noblest  elements  out  of  the 
past,  and  been  the  most  potent  factor  of  moral  and  intel- 
lectual progress  that  has  ever  entered  into  the  life  of  man. 

But  the  speculative  problem  is  at  once  more  simple  and 
less  soluble,  viz.,  in  what  terms  must  we  state  our  idea  of  the 
order  in  which  He  stands,  of  His  place  within  the  order,  and 


AS   GOD   IS   IN   NATURE  17 

of  the  qualities  or  right  by  which  He  holds  it.  Now,  it  is 
evident  that  every  attempt  to  solve  the  former  problem  must 
be  incomplete  without  some  attempt  at  the  solution  of  the 
latter ;  for  a  person  who  fulfils  universal  functions  cannot  be 
described  and  dismissed  as  if  He  were  a  particular  indi- 
vidual. In  other  words,  the  secret  of  such  a  personality  is 
not  explained  when  historical  science  and  literary  art  have 
combined  to  tell  in  the  most  adequate  and  exhaustive  way 
the  story  of  the  life  He  lived  at  a  given  moment  in  a  given 
place,  and  of  how  He  was  conceived  in  ages  of  imaginative 
faith  and  metaphysical  enthusiasm  ;  but  only  when  such  a 
coherent  conception  of  Him  is  reached  as  shall  show  Him 
in  organic  relation  to  the  whole  system  of  things.  Now, 
whatever  we  may  think  of  the  oecumenical  formulae,  we  must 
acknowledge  that  their  purpose  was  to  make  Christ  repre- 
sent in  His  person  the  natures,  relations,  inter-activities, 
community  and  difference  in  attribute  and  being,  of  God  and 
man.  They  may  have  in  many  respects  done  violence  to 
both  speculation  and  logic  ;  but  one  thing  we  must  confess  : 
if  the  idea  they  tried  to  express  as  to  Christ's  person  had 
not  been  formulated  centuries  since,  we  should  have  been 
forced  to  invent  it,  or  something  like  it,  in  order  that  we 
might  have  some  reasonable  hypothesis  explanatory  of  the 
course  things  have  taken.  And  this,  we  may  add,  means 
that  the  problem  is  neither  dead  nor  concerned  with  the 
recovery  of  a  world  of  dead  ideas,  but  one  of  living  actuality, 
concerned  with  all  that  is  most  vital  and  characteristic  in  the 
thought  of  to-day. 

Now,  this  defines  our  purpose,  which  may  be  stated  thus  :  to 
discuss  the  question  as  to  the  Person  of  Christ,  what  He  was, 
and  how  He  ought  to  be  conceived,  not  simply  as  a  chapter  in 
Biblical  or  in  systematic  theology,  but  as  a  problem  directly 
raised  by  the  place  He  holds  and  the  functions  He  has  ful- 
filled in  the  life  of  Man,  collective  and  individual.  The 
principle  which  underlies  the  discussion  we  may  further  state 

P.C.R. 


1 8  THE    PERSON   OF   CHRIST 

in  these  terms :  the  conception  of  Christ  stands  related  to 
history  as  the  idea  of  God  is  related  to  Nature,  i.e.  each  is 
in  its  own  sphere  the  factor  of  order,  or  the  constitutive 
condition  of  a  rational  system.  The  study  of  nature  has 
been  the  means  of  unfolding,  explicating,  and  defining  the 
contents  of  the  idea  of  God  ;  the  study  of  history  has  de- 
veloped, amplified  and  justified  the  conception  of  Christ. 
We  hope  that  this  statement  may  in  the  course  of  the  dis- 
cussions which  follow  become  something  more  and  better 
than  a  paradox. 

Of  course,  a  too  timid  faith  may  doubt  whether  it  be  pious 
to  regard  the  Person  of  Christ  as  in  any  proper  sense  a  fit 
subject  for  philosophical  discussion  ;  and  it  may  urge  that, 
as  the  knowledge  of  it  came  by  revelation,  it  is  only  as  a 
revealed  truth,  attested  and  authenticated  by  inspired  men, 
that  it  ought  to  be  accepted  and  understood.  The  only 
proper  method  of  elucidation  and  proof  is  the  exegesis  of 
the  sacred  Scriptures,  while  the  precise  sense  in  which  it  is 
to  be  construed  has  been  defined  by  the  great  councils  of 
the  undivided  Church.  The  Incarnation  is  a  mystery  which 
transcends  reason,  and  it  can  enter  into  the  categories  of 
metaphysical  criticism  only  to  be  mishandled,  profaned  and 
misjudged. 

But  to  this  it  may  be  sufficient  to  reply  :  it  does  not  lie  in 
the  power  of  any  man  or  any  society  to  keep  the  mysteries  of 
faith  out  of  the  hands  of  reason.  Nature  and  history,  the 
very  necessities  of  belief  and  its  continued  life,  have  com- 
bined to  invite  reason  to  enter  the  domain  of  faith.  The 
only  condition  on  which  reason  could  have  nothing  to  do 
with  religion,  is  that  religion  should  have  nothing  to  do  with 

o  y  o  o 

truth.  For  in  every  controversy  concerning  what  is  or  what 
is  not  truth,  reason  and  not  authority  is  the  supreme  arbiter  ; 
the  authority  that  decides  against  reason  commits  itself  to 
a  conflict  which  is  certain  to  issue  in  its  defeat.  The  men 


AND  THE   REASON   OF   MAN  19 

who  defend  faith  must  think  as  well  as  the  men  who 
oppose  it ;  their  argumentative  processes  must  be  rational 
and  their  conclusions  supported  by  rational  proofs.  If  it 
were  illicit  for  reason  to  touch  the  mysteries  of  religion,  the 
Church  would  never  have  had  a  creed  or  have  believed  a 
doctrine,  nor  would  man  have  possessed  a  faith  higher  than 
the  mythical  fancies  which  pleased  his  childhood.  Without 
the  exercise  of  reason  we  should  never  have  had  the  Fourth 
Gospel  or  the  Pauline  Epistles,  or  any  one  of  those  treatises 
on  the  Godhead,  the  Incarnation,  or  the  Atonement,  from 
Athanasius  to  Hegel,  or  from  Augustine  to  our  own  day, 
which  have  done  more  than  all  the  decrees  of  all  the  Coun- 
cils, or  all  the  Creeds  of  all  the  Churches,  to  keep  faith  living 
and  religion  a  reality.  The  man  who  despises  or  distrusts 
the  reason  despises  the  God  who  gave  it,  and  the  most 
efficient  of  all  the  servants  He  has  bidden  work  within  and 
upon  man  in  behalf  of  truth.  Here,  at  least,  it  may  be 
honestly  said  there  is  no  desire  to  build  Faith  upon  the 
negation  of  Reason  ;  where  both  are  sons  of  God  it  were 
sin  to  seek  to  make  the  one  legitimate  at  the  expense  of  the 
other's  legitimacy. 


BOOK  I 

QUESTIONS    IN   THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF    NATURE 

AND    MIND   WHICH   AFFECT   BELIEF    IN 

THE   SUPERNATURAL   PERSON 


II  n'y  a  point  d'autre  nature,  je  veux  dire  d'autres  lois  naturelles, 
que  les  volontes  efficaces  du  tout-puissant 

Dieu  est  tres-etroitement  uni  a  nos  ames  par  sa  presence,  de  sorte 
qu'on  peut  dire  qu'il  est  le  lien  des  esprits,  de  meme  que  les  espaces 
sont  en  un  sens  le  lien  des  corps. — MALEBRANCHE. 

Quid  enim  est  natura  nisi  iste  ordo,  secundum  quern  Deus  suas 
creaturas  regit  ? — LA  FORGE. 

Nee  sineret  bonus  fieri  male,  nisi  omnipotens  etiam  de  malo  facere 
posset  bene.— AUGUSTINE. 

Von  der  Idee  entfremdet,  ist  die  Natur  nur  der  Leichnam  des 
Verstandes.—  HEGEL. 

Die  wahre  Philosophic  der  Geschichte  besteht  namlich  in  der 
Einsicht,  dass  man,  bei  alien  diesen  endlosen  Veranderungen  und 
ihrem  Wirrwarr,  doch  stets  nur  das  selbe,  gleiche  und  unwandelbare 
Wesen  vor  sich  hat,  welches  heute  das  Selbe  treibt,  wie  gestern  und 
irnmerdar:  sie  soil  also  das  Identische  in  alien  Vorgangen,  der  alten  wie 
der  neuen  Zeit,  des  Orients  wie  des  Occidents,  erkennen,  und,  trotz  aller 
Verschiedenheit  der  speciellen  Umstande,  der  Kostiimes  und  der  Sitten, 
iiberall  die  Selbe  Menschheit  erblicken. 

Was  die  Vernunft  dein  Individuo,  das  ist  die  Geschichte  dem 
menschlichen  Geschlechte. — SCHOPENHAUER. 

Gleichwie  die  mancherlei  Blumen  alle  in  der  Erde  stehen  und  alle 
neben  einander  wachsen,  keine  beisst  sich  mit  der  andern  um  Farben, 
Geruch  und  Geschmack,  sie  lassen  Erde  und  Sonne,  Regen  und  Wind, 
Hitze  und  Kalte  mit  sich  machen  was  sie  wollen,  sie  aber  wachsen  eine 
jede  in  ihrer  Eigenschaft,  so  ists  auch  mit  den  Kindern  Gottes. — 
JACOB  BOHME. 

Es  liegt  wesentlich  im  Begriffe  der  wahrhaften  Religion,  d.  i. 
derjenigcn,  deren  Inhalt  der  absolute  Geist  ist,  dass  sie  geoffenbart 
imd  zwar  von  Gott  geoffenbart  sei. — HEGEL. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   BELIEF   AS   A   PROBLEM    IN    THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF 

NATURE 

§   I.     The  Ideas  of  Nature  and  the  Supernatural 

THE  real  and  initial  difficulty  the  modern  mind  feels  in 
the  face  of  the  apostolic  doctrine  as  to  the  Person  of 
Christ  is  its  radical  incompatibility  with  the  scientific  view 
of  Nature.  It  was  an  easy  thing  to  men  who  had  no  con- 
ception of  natural  order  or  law,  and  who  habitually  thought 
in  the  terms  of  the  miraculous,  to  say,  "We  believe  in  a  super- 
natural Person."  Their  view  of  the  universe  was  not,  in  our 
sense,  normal,  but  was  rather  a  compound  of  the  extra- 
ordinary and  exceptional.  Natural  things  were  explained  by 
supernatural  causes  ;  gods  were  as  numerous  as  men  ;  dreams 
had  more  significance  than  observation  or  experience  ;  the 
commonest  events  were  ascribed  to  Divine  interference;  while 
to  seek  a  physical  reason  for  disease  or  health,  or  states 
of  ecstasy  or  trance,  was  regarded  as  highly  profane.  But 
the  instinctive  faith  of  the  modern  temper  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  the  formula,  "  I  believe  in  an  order  that  admits 
no  miracle  and  knows  no  supernatural."  Nature  is  to  us  the 
realm  of  law  ;  we  suspect  the  abnormal,  and  tend  to  deny 
promptly  whatever  postulates  for  its  being  a  force  we  cannot 
analyze  or  measure.  The  creed  common  to  modern  man  we 
might  describe  by  the  word  "  Naturalism,"  were  not  the  term 
so  illusory  and  so  incapable  of  a  fixed  meaning.  In  a  sense, 
we  are  all  Naturalists  ;  we  speak  and  think  as  those  who  live 
and  move  and  have  their  being  in  a  nature  which  represents 


24  THE   ORDER   OF  NATURE 

to  us  all  we  know  of  reality  and  life.  For  the  Nature  we 
describe  as  dead  is  a  mere  abstraction,  without  any  being  in 
our  conscious  experience.  Spinoza  distinguished  "  natura 
naturans,"  from  "  natura  naturata " :  the  former  was  causa- 
tive, creative,  efficient  nature,  the  latter  nature  as  caused, 
created,  produced.  But  the  distinction  was  subjective  and 
arbitrary ;  it  represented  no  objective  reality.  We  do  not 
know  this  "  natura  naturata "  by  itself ;  it  is  the  "  natura 
naturans  "  viewed  as  a  realized  or  embodied  order.  Nor  are 
we  able  to  separate  the  "  naturans,"  from  the  "  naturata,"  for 
it  is  only  the  system  we  know  conceived  through  the  causal 
idea,  a  system  charged  with  the  energies  which  as  efficient 
are  the  sufficient  reason  for  its  continuance.  But  whether  we 
think  of"  Nature"  as  causative  or  as  caused,  what  we  mean  is 
a  system  whose  reason  is  in  itself,  which  would  be  disturbed 
or  broken  up  by  the  intervention  of  any  higher  power  or  will, 
superseding  its  forces  and  accomplishing  something  beyond 
their  capacity  or  scope.  So  universal  and  instinctive  has 
this  notion  become  that  we  feel  as  if  a  supernatural  Person — 
especially  in  so  exaggerated  a  form  as  we  have  in  Jesus 
Christ — were  an  idea  we  could  as  little  conceive  in  thought 
as  represent  in  imagination. 

2.  This  is  too  great  a  question  to  be  argued  as  if  it  con- 
cerned the  old  and  exhausted  commonplaces  as  to  the  possi- 
bility and  credibility  of  miracles.  There  never  was  a  more 
unreal  discussion  raised  in  any  School,  or  by  men  who  had  less 
right  to  raise  it  Hume  was  a  dexterous  dialectician,  and  in 
nothing  was  his  dexterity  so  apparent  as  in  the  way  in  which 
he  concealed,  if  not  from  himself,  at  least  from  his  opponents, 
the  incompatibility  of  his  argument  against  miracles  with 
the  first  principles  of  his  own  philosophy.  That  philosophy 
was  the  purest  and  most  consistent  of  all  modern  scepticisms, 
and  Hume  was  the  most  subtle  and  logical  of  all  modern 
empiricists.  His  apparatus  was  simple,  his  analysis  of  the 
material  contained  in  Locke's  two  sources  of  knowledge  was 


IN  THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   HUME  25 

thorough,  and  his  deduction  complete.  The  originals  of  all 
knowledge  we're  two — impressions  and  ideas.  Impressions 
denoted  the  direct  and  vivid  appearance  of  Nature  in  and 
through  sense  ;  while  ideas  were  remembered  impressions, — as 
it  were  their  faint  echo  or  image.  'Now,'  Hume  argues,  'since 
these  two  are  the  sources  and  only  realities  of  knowledge,  and 
since  we  never  find  ourselves  without  an  impression  or  idea,  we 
have  no  independent  existence,  and  are  nothing  but  the  series 
of  our  impressions  and  ideas.  It  follows  that  as  we — or  the 
succession  of  images  we  mistake  for  ourselves — can  never 
have  impressions  of  more  than  single  things,  we  can  never 
have  any  impression  of  self,  which,  so  far  from  being  a  single 
thing,  is  an  infinite  multitude  of  things  existing  in  either 
arbitrary  or  determined  relations.  It  further  follows  that 
as  we  perceive  only  external  occurrence  and  not  internal 
causation,  we  can  never  have  any  impression  of  cause  or 
perceive  anything  more  than  antecedence  and  sequence  or  the 
coexistence  and  association  of  contiguous  things.  But  where 

o  o 

we  have  no  impressions  we  can  have  no  ideas ;  and  there- 
fore we  cannot  speak  of  causation  or  causes  as  real  things. 
Nor,  for  the  same  reason,  can  we  have  any  impression  or  any 
consequent  idea  of  so  vast  a  thing  as  space,  or  of  so  multi- 
tudinous a  thing  as  time.  The  ideas  of  self,  causation,  space, 
time  are,  therefore,  all  unrealities,  begotten  of  the  tendency 
to  feign,  i.e.  they  are  mere  fictions  of  the  phantasy.  All  the 
knowledge  that  comes  to  man  is  given  in  individual  impres- 
sions, and  all  that  legitimately  remains  is  the  echo  of  these 
in  single  or  associated  ideas.' 

Now  let  us  take  the  principles  supplied  by  this  method  and 
apply  them  to  the  ideas  or  beliefs  which  underlie  Hume's  famous 
argument  against  miracles.  Miracles,  he  says,  have  two  things 
against  them  :  (a)  they  are  impossible,  for  they  imply  a 
violation  of  the  order  or  the  laws  ot  nature,  and  (/3)  they  are 
incredible  because  they  contradict  our  human  experience. 
Well,  then,  could  the  first  argument  stand  against  Hume's 


26  HUME   DEFIES  HIS   OWN   LOGIC 

own  method  of  criticism?  Let  us  begin  with  the  idea  of  Nature. 
Where  did  we  get  it  ?  and  what  does  it  mean  ?  Had  we 
ever  an  impression  of  Nature  ?  How  could  we  have  it?  We 
may  have  an  impression  of  single  things,  say,  of  cold,  of 
heat,  of  taste,  of  smell,  of  light,  of  sound.  But  Nature  is 
not  a  single  thing,  but  rather  the  vast,  multifarious,  complex 
aggregate  of  all  real  and  possible  perceptions  ;  it  is,  therefore, 
not  capable  of  being  the  object  or  occasion  of  an  impression, 
and  so  it  can  only  be  by  an  entirely  illicit  process  that  we 
form  the  fictitious  idea  of  Nature  as  a  connected  and  co- 
herent whole.  How  then  can  we  say  that  Nature  is  ?  Still 
more  how  can  we  tell  what  Nature  is  ?  Can  we  even  by 
analysis  tell  the  immense  number  of  things  which  the  term 
Nature  means?  It  is  (a)  the  total  infinite  multitude  of  those 
impressions  which  make  up  the  world  without  us,  whose 
cause  no  man  can  discover  ;  (/3)  the  whole  army  of  associated 
ideas  within,  which  we  mistake  for  ourselves,  but  which  is  only 
a  stream,  or  series,  or  succession  of  units  in  perpetual  flux, 
moving  and  changing  with  inconceivable  rapidity  ;  and  (7)  it 
is  all  these  unresolved  but  associated  units  bound  into  a  sys- 
tem by  some  unintelligible  principle  in  some  inexplicable 
mode.  There  can  be  no  such  thing,  therefore,  as  an  idea 
of  Nature,  for  of  Nature  we  can  have  no  impression,  and 
what  is  so  named  is  only  an  accidental  aggregation  of  ideas. 
Hence,  all  reasoning  based  upon  the  notion  of  Nature  as  a 
known  thing  or  system  of  things  is  illicit. 

But  let  us  see  whether  the  idea  of  Order  will  fare  any  better 
in  the  hands  of  this  criticism  :  can  we  have  any  impression  of 
it?  Here  difficulties  of  another  kind  meet  us  :  for  order  im- 
plies tirne  and  its  sequences.  And  so  to  have  a  notion  of 
order  we  must  be  ourselves  continuous ;  but  we  are  on 
Hume's  premisses  without  any  permanent  personal  identity, 
nothing  indeed  but  a  momentary  taste  or  fragrance,  an 
affection  of  heat  or  cold,  a  sensation  of  colour  or  resistance  ; 
in  a  word,  only  a  series  of  impressions  and  ideas,  with  no  ' 


27 

existence  save  such  as  they  can  give.  If,  then,  we  are  to 
receive  an  impression  of  order,  we  must  have  the  whole 
infinite  series  summed  up  in  one  single  sensation,  which  would 
imply  a  sensory  as  vast  as  the  universe.  As  the  thing  is  so 
manifestly  impossible  we  can  have  no  conception  of  order, 
and,  therefore,  cannot  reason  as  if  we  had.  Again,  take 
another  term  in  Hume's  argument,  Violation ;  but  how  can  we 
have  a  conception  of  violated  order  if  we  have  no  notion  of 
the  order  said  to  be  violated,  any  more  than  we  can  have 
any  conception  of  Nature  or  Self,  when  both  nature  and  self 
have  been  dissolved  ?  Therefore,  to  argue  that  miracles  are 
a  violation  of  the  order  or  laws  of  Nature,  is  to  assume  a 
multitude  of  ideas  which  experience  has  been  proved  incap- 
able of  giving,  and  psychology  unable  by  any  analytical  pro- 
cess to  discover,  leaving  as  the  only  possible  conclusion  the 
assumption  that  man  first  gave  them  to  Nature.  The  result 
is  that  Hume's  argument  is  so  fundamentally  opposed  to  his 
own  first  principles  in  philosophy  as  to  be  broken,  split,  and 
ended  by  the  very  criticism  he  himself  brought  to  bear  upon 
personal  identity,  upon  causation,  upon  space,  upon  time, 
upon  the  very  ideas  on  which  his  argument  against  miracles 
rests,  and  which  gave  to  it  all  its  apparent  validity. 

§  II.     Nature  and  Thought 

I.  But  it  were  altogether  inconsistent  with  the  gravity  of  the 
discussion  on  which  we  are  entering,  to  conduct  it  as  a  mere 
arguinentum  ad  hominem  against  a  man  who  confessed  that 
he  did  not  live  up  to  his  own  philosophy.  It  is  evident, 
indeed,  that  a  position  so  a  priori  and  final  as  this,  that  we 
live  under  an  order  or  system  which  has  no  room  for  a  super- 
natural Person,  must  be  discussed  as  a  principle  involved  in 
the  most  fundamental  of  all  questions,  viz.,  in  what  terms 
must  we  interpret  this  order  or  system?  What  does  Nature 
mean  and  what  include?  Does  man  make  it,  or  does  it 


28        NATURE   DOES   NOT   INTERPRET   MAN 

make  man  ?  Is  thought  the  product  of  experience,  or  is 
experience  made  possible  by  factors  which  transcend  it? 
These  are  radical  questions,  as  old  as  the  attempt  to  explain 
all  that  we  mean  by  the  term  Knowledge,  its  genesis  and 
conditions,  its  limits  and  reality  ;  and  they  may  seem  as  in- 
soluble as  they  are  ancient.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  the 
more  fundamental  a  problem  becomes  the  less  soluble  it 
grows,  or  that,  though  perhaps  beyond  a  final  speculative 
solution,  it  is  incapable  of  a  rational  answer.  And  the  funda- 
mental character  of  these  questions  is  seen  in  the  way  in 
which  they  determine  all  our  thinking,  our  attitude  to  what 
is  termed  Nature,  our  interpretation  of  the  phenomena  we 
call  History.  For  what  they  really  mean  is  this — whether 
we  are  to  find  the  ultimate  factors  of  knowledge  in  per- 
sonality or  in  the  impersonal  forces  we  co-ordinate  under 
the  phrase  "  system  or  order  of  nature."  The  intellectual 
result  will  indeed  be  very  different  as  we  make  Nature 
or  Thought  the  ultimate  term  in  our  logical  process.  If 
"  Nature,"  taken  in  the  sense  of  the  system  of  forces  that 
surround  us,  be  conceived  as  the  method  and  the  measure 
for  the  interpretation  of  man,  it  means  that  he  is  to  be  con- 
strued as  part  of  a  universe  which  knows  antecedence  and 
sequence,  but  not  rational  causation,  i.e.  it  is  a  universe  of 
co-ordinated  phenomena,  not  of  connected  and  intelligible 
being.  In  such  a  system  man  may  be  conceived  as  a  succes- 
sion of  similar  or  dissimilar  states  of  consciousness,  but  not 
as  a  concrete  and  coherent  person,  i.e.  a  continuous  and  self- 
identical  being.  The  successive  conscious  states  which  he 
may  identify  with  himself,  will  be  governed  by  forces 
operating  from  without  and  independently  of  what  he  may 
call  himself,  i.e.  the  conscious  states  which  he  is  pleased  to 
regard  as  constituting  the  only  personality  he  knows,  will 
represent  the  action  of  forces  he  does  not  know.  He  thus 
becomes  in  the  strict  sense  not  a  cause,  but  an  effect  or 
result ;  his  concrete  and  conscious  being,  his  character  and 


MAN   INTERPRETS   NATURE  29 

mind,  appear  as  the  creations  of  powers  and  circumstances 
which  he  can  neither  discover  nor  name,  though  he  must 
conceive  them  as  necessitating;  yet  to  say  that  they  were 
necessitated  would  be  to  transcend  experience.  His  thoughts, 
his  feelings,  and  his  actions  are  thus  regulated  by  laws  as 
absolute  as  those  which  determine  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the 
tides,  the  movement  of  the  planets  or  of  the  stars,  the  mould- 
ing of  the  tear  or  of  the  dewdrop. 

But  if  Nature  be  thus  used  for  the  interpretation  of  man, 
two  things  follow.  First,  the  man  who  emerges  from  this 
speculative  process  is  not  the  man  we  know,  i.e.  he  is  not 
a  free  and  conscious  reason  who  can  act  from  choice  and  for 
an  end  he  can  state  in  terms  now  moral,  now  intellectual, 
now  emotional,  and  who  even  distinguishes  himself  as  a 
person  from  the  things,  events,  and  circumstances  amid  which 
he  moves.  And,  secondly,  the  Nature  which  is  invoked  to 
explain  him  ceases  herself  to  be  intelligible,  is  without  any 
explicable  relation  to  the  intellect,  and  has  nothing  rational 
either  in  her  order  or  in  her  phenomena.  There  is,  indeed, 
no  single  idea  on  which  science  prides  herself  which  could  be 
received  from  Nature  alone ;  for  even  if  mind  were  regarded 
as  a  simple  receptivity,  a  mere  tabula  rasa  or  sheet  of  white 
paper,  it  Would  be  necessary  to  invest  it  with  the  power  of 
reading  the  things  that  are  written  upon  its  clean  or  figured 
surface  ;  and  the  power  to  read  implies  what  we  may  term 
the  whole  grammar  of  natural  intelligence.  For  the  thing 
written  is  something  which  conveys  thought  to  thought  ;  i.e. 
it  is  a  language  which  one  mind  speaks  and  another  mind 
understands. 

But  to  a  language  three  things  are  necessary  :  it  must 
express  reason,  contain  reason,  and  speak  to  reason.  If 
thought  did  not  make  it,  thought  could  never  interpret  it,  for 
nothing  but  the  work  of  thought  is  intelligible  to  thought. 
But  thought  is  the  most  distinctive  attribute  and  exercise  of 
personality  ;  only  in  a  person  does  it  originate,  and  only  by  a 


30  MIND:    ESSE   EST   PERCIPERE 

person  can  it  be  understood.  For  how  an  intelligible  can  be 
without  an  intelligence,  both  creative  and  receptive,  is  a  thing 
which  experience  does  not  know  and  thought  cannot  conceive. 
If,  then,  we  eliminate  Personality  from  Nature — either  objec- 
tively, as  interpretable ;  or  subjectively,  as  interpreted — we  are 
left  without  a  nature  we  can  regard  as  intelligible.  Person- 
ality thus  becomes  the  very  condition  through  which  Nature, 
as  known  to  science,  is,  while  it  is  also  the  factor  through 
which  all  the  sciences  which  explain  Nature  have  come  to  be 
and  are  able  to  continue  in  being.  But  the  organ  through 
which  all  natural  forces  are  known  cannot  be  itself  a  mere 
unit  of  force  ;  i.e.  the  co-ordinating  genius  cannot  be  one  of 
the  co-ordinated  atoms.  In  other  words,  the  Personality 
which  makes  Nature  was  not  made  by  the  Nature  it  makes. 

2.  But  in  order  that  the  position  so  summarily  stated  may 
appear  to  be  not  without  reason,  and  that  the  drift  and  pur- 
pose of  the  argument  which  is  to  be  built  upon  it  may  be 
made  more  apparent,  it  will  be  necessary  to  attempt  a  more 
detailed  discussion  of  the  relations  between  Personality  and 
Nature  as  factors  of  the  intelligible  which  Nature  constitutes 
and  Personality  interprets.  We  are  accustomed  to  distinguish 
Nature  as  the  realm  of  necessity  from  Personality  as  the  seat 
of  freedom.  We  conceive  uniformity  to  be  the  note  of  the  one, 
but  reason  and  will  to  be  the  notes  of  the  other.  What  is 
termed  causation  reigns  in  Nature,  where  the  law  of  antece- 
dence and  sequence  is  held  to  be  invariable  ;  but  Personality 
is  itself  a  cause  ;  i.e.  it  has  the  power  of  initiative  or  of  break- 
ing into  the  sequences  which  Nature  follows,  but  can  neither 
interrupt  nor  evade.  Now  what  relation  exists  between  the 
Personality  which  is  conceived  as  thought  or  reason,  as 
freedom  or  will,  and  the  Nature  which  is  conceived  as  uni- 
form and  necessitated  ?  Or,  to  express  our  question  other- 
wise, Can  what  we  term  Nature  exist  without  the  Person- 
ality which  construes  it,  and,  in  a  sense,  constitutes  it  ? 

Now    certain    things    may    here    be    said    to    be   perfectly 


NATURE:    ESSE   EST   PERCIPI  31 

obvious,  for  it  will  be  conceded  that  they  are  due  to  the 
modification  of  the  senses  through  which  we  hold  intercourse 
with  the  outer  world.  We  refer  to  the  psychology  of  those 
qualities  which  are  regarded  as  peculiarly  secondary,  like 
colour.  The  eye  distinguishes  objects  by  their  special  colours 
or  distinctive  hues,  and  we  speak  as  if  these  colours  inhered 
in  the  things  themselves,  and  were  quite  independent  of  the 
spectator.  But  subtract  the  man  who  looks  at  the  objects, 
and  what  would  become  of  their  hues  and  colours  ?  Here, 
for  example,  stand  three  men  ;  in  the  centre  is  one  with  the 
eye  of  the  artist,  sensitive  to  every  shade  and  delicacy  of 
hue,  finding  variety  where  men  with  a  less  sensitive  organ 
can  see  only  sameness.  But  on  his  right  hand  stands  a 
man  whose  reds  are  all  green,  whose  yellows  are  all  browns, 
or  to  whom  all  colours  appear  only  as  a  sort  of  yellowish 
white ;  and  we  ask,  why  Nature  wears  such  a  different  com- 
plexion to  him  from  what  it  possesses  to  the  artist,  and  we 
are  told  that  he  is  colour-blind.  Again,  on  the  left  hand 
stands  a  man  who  can  take  no  part  in  the  controversy,  for  he 
is  blind,  and  to  him  colours  are  not ;  and  were  we  to  ask 
him  what  scarlet  is  like,  he  might  reply  in  the  language 
of  the  blind  man  in  Locke,  that  it  is  like  the  sound  of  a 
trumpet.  Colour  then  does  not  inhere  in  things  ;  Nature 
by  herself  is  without  it.  It  is  there  because  man  is  there, 
possessed  of  the  sense  by  which  it  is  not  simply  perceived, 
but,  in  a  sense,  constituted. 

But  what  is  true  of  colour  is  no  less  true  of  sound.  We 
may  think  of  it  as  the  result  of  purely  natural  causes,  con- 
cerning in  an  equal  degree  the  physicist  who  speculates 
about  energy,  and  the  physiologist  who  studies  the  senses 
in  relation  to  the  external  world.  If  we  ask  the  physicist, 
he  will  explain  the  mode  of  its  transmission  ;  he  will  draw 
a  parallel  between  the  movement  of  light  and  of  sound, 
and  theorize  as  to  the  length  of  the  wave  by  which  they 
travel,  or  the  rapidity  by  which  the  waves  of  sound  move 


32  THOUGHT  GIVES   TO  NATURE 

from  the  place  of  origin  to  the  tympanum  on  which  they 
break.  But  how  far  can  he  carry  us  ?  How  much  does 
he  explain  ?  Here  again  stand  three  men.  One  man  has 
the  sensitive  ear  of  the  musician.  He  listens  to  the  oratorio 
and  can  detect  each  separate  instrument  in  the  orchestra, 
tell  whether  it  be  well  or  ill  played,  and  what  it  contributes 
to  the  collective  harmony  ;  he  can  note  the  tones  of  each 
singer's  voice,  and,  as  he  hears  the  wonderful  march  of  the 
music,  he  can  combine  into  a  whole  the  world  that  had 
moved  in  the  master's  mind.  He  sees,  through  his  hearing  as 
it  were,  the  mortified  anger  and  shame  of  the  defeated  priests 
of  Baal  and  the  mocking  laughter  of  the  prophet ;  the 
mustering  of  angelic  hosts  ;  the  tramp  of  disciplined  armies ; 
the  gathering  of  the  dead  to  the  sound  of  the  last  trump  ; 
the  agony  and  infinite  yearning  of  the  soul  that  cries  to  God 
out  of  the  depths  ;  and  the  jubilant  and  exulting  speech  of 
the  spirit  that  stands  justified  before  the  Eternal  Judge. 
Not  a  sound  escapes  him,  and  out  of  their  harmonies  come 
visions  and  dreams  such  as  only  the  master  can  create  and 
the  soul  of  the  sensitive  disciple  can  see.  But  on  his  right 
hand  stands  a  man  who  listens  with  impatience  or  doubt 
or  bewilderment.  These  instruments  to  him  make  but 
a  jangling  of  confused  sounds  ;  the  voices  that  rise  and 
fall  and  tremble  in  song  have  less  significance  than  if  they 
had  been  lifted  in  prosaic  speech.  The  enthusiasm  of  his 
neighbour  is  to  him  extravagant  and  foolish  ;  his  call  for 
admiration  seems  sheer  impertinence ;  the  whole  thing  is 
utter  weariness  and  distress.  What  is  the  matter  ?  In 
current  phrase,  the  man  has  no  ear.  He  knows  sound,  he 
can  interpret  speech  ;  but  music  has  for  him  no  charm,  or 
even  any  being.  While  the  man  on  the  right  hand  so  feels, 
what  of  the  man  on  the  left?  His  face  is  a  blank  ;  he  looks 
round  curiously  but  without  any  sign  of  intelligence ;  he 
watches  faces  that  teach  him  nothing,  and  he  only  knows 
from  gesture  and  action  that  there  is  proceeding  between  the 


WHAT  SENSE   PERCEIVES   IN  NATURE       33 

other  two  a  discussion  in  which  he  can  take  no  part  Their 
controversy  concerns  a  point  on  which  he  cannot  adjudicate, 
for  he  has  heard  no  sound  ;  he  is  deaf.  And  what  does  this 
total  difference  of  attitude  to  what  we  regard  as  the  physi- 
cal phenomena  of  sound  mean  but  this — that  sound  is  not 
without  but  within  man  ;  that  he  can  educe  sounds  from 
the  waves  which  have  been  set  in  motion  by  the  vibrating 
body,  and  can  weave  them  into  harmonies  such  as  Nature 
never  made,  speaking  of  things  more  glorious  than  the  heart 
of  Nature  could  have  conceived  or  imagined  ?  And  he  is  able 
to  do  this  and  to  compel  Nature  to  lend  him  the  means  of 
doing  it,  because  it  is  only  through  him  and  his  power  to 
interpret  and  to  combine  them  that  all  the  factors  and 
conditions  of  sound  are  realized. 

And  we  could  go  from  sense  to  sense,  from  ear  and  eye  to 
taste  and  smell,  and  by  analysis  enlarge  and  confirm  the 
conclusion  that  the  qualities  which  our  senses  perceive  are 
not  things  merely  of  external  Nature  ;  but  that  either  they 
could  not  be  or  could  not  seem  to  be  without  the  constitutive 
faculty  or  the  interpretative  Personality  of  man.  In  other 
words,  Nature  in  her  own  right  is,  if  not  a  void,  yet  at  most 
a  mere  aggregate  of  mechanical  properties  ;  her  pomp  and 
beauty,  her  voice  and  all  her  harmonies  she  owes  to  Mind. 
We  receive  from  her  what  we  have  given  to  her,  and  without 
us  she  would  not  be  what  she  is. 

3.  But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  argument  avails 
only  as  regards  the  qualities  we  term  secondary.  There  is  no 
conception  so  necessary  to  the  modern  idea  of  Nature  as 
that  of  Energy,  for  without  it  no  change  and  no  continuity 
would  be  possible.  For  Nature  would  be  simply  an  inert,  un- 
moved, and  unmovable  mass,  if  indeed,  to  our  modern  way  of 
thinking,  these  terms  do  not  denote  ideas  too  contradictory  to 
be  placed  together.  Energy  is  the  cause,  and  its  convertibility 
the  form,  of  all  physical  changes.  It  is  held  to  be  constant  in 
quantity,  indestructible  and  persistent  in  essence,  but  infinitely 

P.C.R. 


34       ENERGY  KNOWN  IN  NATURE 

varied  in  mode :  while  ever  changing  its  form,  it  yet  never 
ceases  to  be  capable  at  once  of  a  permutation  which  knows 
no  rest,  and  a  continuance  which  knows  no  break.  But  there 
is  a  question  which  underlies  all  our  reasoning  concerning  the 
behaviour  and  permanence  of  energy  ;  to  wit,  how  do  we  come 
by  the  idea  of  it  ?  This  does  not  simply  mean,  what  evidence 
have  we  for  the  existence  of  force  ?  but  rather  this  :  how  can 
we  think,  nay,  why  must  we  think,  that  there  is  in  Nature 
that  power  of  doing  work  which  we  name  Energy?  If  we 
explain  it  by  our  experience  of  resistance, — i.e.  by  our  know- 
ledge that  whenever  we  exercise  effort  there  is  something 
without  that  resists  us,  presses  against  us,  overcomes  our  effort, 
or  is  overcome  by  it, — what  does  this  theory  as  to  the  origin 
of  the  idea  mean  ?  Does  it  not  signify  that  in  order  to  the 
knowledge  of  energy  without  we  must  posit  free  power  within  ? 
If  we  could  not  put  forth  effort  we  could  never  meet  resistance  ; 
the  energy  that  resists  would  therefore  remain  unknown.  But 
is  not  this  to  argue  that  we  know  causation,  because  we  are 
ourselves  causes  ;  and  that  it  is  through  our  own  power  of 
acting  that  the  notion  that  Nature  has  power  to  act  is  gained 
and  formed  ?  It  means  that  we  derive  the  notion  of  energy 
from  our  own  conscious  freedom, — that  the  idea  of  causation 
in  Nature  is  a  clear,  or  even  inevitable,  deduction  from  Will  ? 
In  other  words,  a  world  of  necessitated  beings  could  not  form 
or  conceive  the  notion  of  energy ;  for  the  very  experiences  that 
make  the  notion  of  it  possible,  the  faculties  to  which  it  could 
be  presented,  and  in  whose  terms  it  could  be  represented, 
would  be  absent ;  and  such  thought  as  there  was  would  be 
too  purely  mechanical — i.e.  too  unconscious  of  any  power  that 
could  be  exercised  within  and  resisted  without, — to  be  able  to 
conceive  a  universe  whose  surest  datum  was  the  consciousness 
of  "Matter,  Motion,  and  Force."  If,  then,  we  speak  of  Energy 
and  attempt  to  interpret  Nature  through  it,  what  are  \ve  doing 
but  constituting  Nature  in  the  terms  of  Personality,  using  what 
\s  given  within  as  the  key  to  open  the  mysteries  or  reveal  the 


BECAUSE   FREEDOM   IS  IN   MAN  35 

realities  which  exist  without?  We  conclude,  therefore,  that 
Energy  in  Nature  is  the  correlate  of  Freedom  in  man ;  and 
were  he  not  free,  he  could  neither  think  nor  speak  of  energy, 
for  he  would  be  without  the  intellectual  powers  needed  for 
its  recognition  or  discovery. 

4.  But  secondary  qualities  like  colour  and  sound,  or  special 
and  definite  conceptions  like  causation,  whether  represented 
by  physics  as  energy,  or  by  metaphysics  as  will  or  cause, 
are  not  the  only  sort  of  terms  which  Personality  supplies 
for  the  interpretation  of  Nature  ;  it  supplies  also  what  is  even 
more  fundamental — the  forms  under  which  we  perceive  the 
phenomena  which,  we  may  say,  constitute  the  many-featured 
face  it  turns  towards  our  senses,  and  the  categories  through 
which  it  becomes  intelligible  to  our  thought.  We  have 
already  argued,  in  effect,  that  the  intelligibility  of  Nature 
implies  both  an  intelligence  through  which  it  is,  and  an  intel- 
lect to  which  it  is,  the  one  creative,  the  other  interpretative, 
of  the  thought  embodied  in  Nature.  The  real  world  of  the 
intellect  is,  of  course,  the  intelligible,  and  neither  could  exist 
without  the  other  ;  i.e.  there  could  be  no  intellect  without  an 
intelligible  ;  no  intelligible  apart  from  the  intellect.  We  may 
expand  this  proposition  into  a  series  of  inferences  which 
may  be  stated  thus  :  (i)  since  the  intellect  can  interpret 
Nature,  Nature  is  intelligible  ;  (2)  since  Nature  is  intelligible, 
there  must  be  some  correspondence  or  correlation  between 
its  laws  or  methods  and  the  rational  processes  in  us  ;  (3) 
since  there  is  this  correlation  between  the  intelligible  world 
and  the  interpretative  intellect,  they  must  embody  one  and 
the  same  intelligence.  What  these  terms  respectively  mean 
and  what  the  argument  aims  at  proving  may  be  made  ob- 
vious by  an  illustration.  Language  is  capable  of  translation 
or  interpretation  by  reason  just  in  the  degree  that  it  expresses 
reason.  The  speech  of  the  mad  is  ridiculous  to  the  sane,  the 
speech  of  the  sane  has  no  meaning  to  the  mad.  The  traveller 
or  missionary  who  discovers  and  settles  among  a  hitherto 


36  NATURE   A   VISUAL   LANGUAGE 

unknown  tribe,  may  learn  its  tongue,  however  rudimentary  and 
formless,  may  get  to  understand  its  beliefs  and  customs,  its 
views  of  nature  and  life,  however  barbarous  and  uninformed  ; 
but  he  can  do  so  only  so  far  as  he  finds  in  the  savages  a 
reason  so  akin  to  his  own  that  he  can  stand,  as  it  werer 
within  the  tribe's  consciousness,  and  look  out  at  the  world 
through  its  eyes.  Scholars  of  this  century  have,  by  the  help 
of  bilingual  or  trilingual  inscriptions,  recovered  to  historical 
and  literary  knowledge  several  long-forgotten  languages  ;  but 
no  ingenuity  could  have  deciphered  into  literature  or  worked 
into  history  figures  that  were  mere  fortuitous  scratchings, 
freaks  of  Nature,  or  accidental  lines  drawn  by  some  wandering 
horde.  So  the  very  fact  of  the  intelligibility  of  Nature,  or  the 
possibility  of  its  interpretation  by  mind,  means  that  it  em- 
bodies or  expresses  intelligence, — is  the  medium  or  vehicle  of 
ideas  which  the  human  intellect  can  discover  and  think  as  if 
they  were  its  own. 

But  this  argument  admits  a  further  development.  The 
human  intellect  could  not  live  unless  embosomed  by  a 
universe  which  was  in  its  constitution  and  contents  as  rational 
as  itself.  Reason  could  not  live  in  a  world  where  no  reason 
was.  If  the  world  became  mad,  if  its  physical  forces  were 
now  conserved  and  now  destroyed  ;  if  continuity  governed  one 
day  and  accident  the  next ;  if  gravitation  now  ruled,  and  all 
rivers  flowed  to  the  sea  and  all  lighter  bodies  fell  towards  the 
heavier :  if,  again,  levitation  reigned,  and  the  sea  turned  itself 
into  the  rivers,  and  rose  above  the  mountains,  and  the  heavier 
bodies  flew  away  from  the  lighter — what  would  the  effect  of 
this  mad  world  be  on  the  sane  mind  ?  Could  mind  in  its 
presence  maintain  its  sanity  ?  Or,  to  reverse  the  supposition, 
if  the  world  were  beautiful  and  orderly,  a  scene  of  grander 
order  and  higher  law  than  we  now  know  it  to  be,  but  if  all 
the  men  within  and  upon  it  were  mad — would  it  be  to  them 
a  sane  world  ?  Would  not  their  madness  make  its  very 
sanity  more  mad  and  more  vain  than  the  worst  insanity 


THE   INTELLECT  AND  THE   INTELLIGIBLE      37 

would  be?  And  does  not  this  signify  that  \ve  must  have 
the  correlation  of  the  intellect  and  the  intelligible  before 
we  can  have  either  a  rational  mankind  or  any  science  of 
nature?  But  it  signifies  one  thing  more,  viz.,  that  the  In- 
telligence which  is  embodied  in  this  intelligible  Nature,  is 
in  kind  and  quality  one  with  the  intelligence  embodied  in 
its  interpreter.  The  Reason  that  lives  in  Nature,  speaks  a 
language  that  the  reason  personalized  in  man  can  under- 
stand and  translate.  The  mathematics  which  have  con- 
trolled and  guided  the  Builder  of  the  heavens,  are  identical 
with  the  mathematics  which  the  astronomer  in  his  study 
deduces  from  the  idea  of  space  given  in  his  own  thought,  and 
which  he  proves  by  the  processes  of  his  own  reason.  If  he 
looks  at  this  fine  correspondence  from  the  subjective  or 
dialectical  side,  he  may  say  with  Plato,  "  The  Creator  in  His 
act  of  creation  has  geometrized";  but  if  he  regard  it  from  its 
objective  or  observational  side,  he  will  say  with  Kepler,  "  In 
reading  the  secrets  of  Nature  I  am  thinking  the  thoughts  of 
God  after  Him."  But  whether  he  speaks  with  Plato  or  with 
Kepler  he  means  the  same  thing  :  there  is  such  a  corre- 
spondence between  the  mind  and  the  universe,  between  the 
intelligible  we  think  and  the  intellect  we  think  by,  that  their 
relation  can  only  be  explained  by  identity  of  source,  i.e.  by 
both  being  expressions  of  a  single  supreme  Intelligence. 

§   III.     Mind  and  the  Process  of  Creation 

The  principle  then  which  underlies  the  discussion  so  far 
as  it  has  proceeded  may  be  expressed  thus  :  The  problem 
of  personal  experience  is  one  with  the  problem  of  universal 
existence  ;  and  from  this  principle  we  have  attempted  to 
deduce  the  conclusion  :  the  only  postulate  from  which  we 
can  derive  an  intelligible  Nature  or  a  rational  experience  is 
thought.  In  other  words,  since  \ve  can  conceive  Nature  only 
through  the  forms  and  in  the  categories  supplied  by  the  inter- 
pretative Personality,  we  are  bound  to  infer  that  the  Nature 


38     PROBLEM  OF  EVOLUTION  NOT  ORGANISMS 

which  none  but  a  personal   Intellect  can  interpret,  none  but 
a  personal  Intelligence  could  create. 

i.  But  this  conclusion  supplies  us  with  a  premiss  for  a  new 
discussion,  and  this  discussion  will  as  much  concern  the 
nature  that  the  biologist  interprets  as  our  past  discussions 
have  concerned  the  nature  that  the  physicist  conceives.  We 
may  state  the  new  premiss,  which  follows  from  the  con- 
clusion of  the  previous  argument,  thus  :  The  real  Nature 
that  needs  to  be  explained  is  not  the  phenomenal,  but  the 
noumenal  ;  not  the  world  which  appears  to  reason,  but  the 
reason  which  organizes,  into  an  intelligible  whole,  the  world 
of  appearances,  making  it  real  to  experience  through  its 
reality  to  thought.  The  meaning  of  this  principle  is  that 
the  real  problem  of  Evolution  in  the  organic  kingdom  is  the 
genesis  and  the  development  of  mind  as  it  is  realized  in 
the  individual  and  has  been  exercised  by  the  race.  Certain 
masters  of  scientific  exposition  have  written  as  if  the  serious 
problem  of  evolution  concerned  the  origin  and  succession  of 
living  forms.  They  have  thought  it  enough  to  prove  the 
mutability  of  species,  the  parts  played  by  the  factors  of 
organism  and  environment  in  the  development  of  the  powers 
that  best  fitted  for  success  and  survival  in  the  struggle  for 
life.  It  has  been  imagined  that  we  could,  by  the  comparison 
and  correlation  of  forms,  exhibit  the  process  of  their  evolu- 
tion, or  the  mode  and  the  order  in  which  our  planet  came  to 
be  peopled  with  the  busy  tribes  of  flesh  and  blood.  I  raise 
no  question  as  to  the  mode  or  as  to  the  order  ;  what  I  do 
question  is,  whether  a  theory  as  to  the  evolution  and  the 
succession  of  biological  forms  has  any  claim  to  be  regarded 
as  a  theory  adequate  to  the  explanation  of  the  facts  of  the 
case  ;  i.e.  to  be  considered  a  scientific  hypothesis  as  to  how 
the  whole  of  nature,  inclusive  of  every  form  and  quality  of 
life,  came  to  be. 

The  theory  may  indeed   be  described   as   essentially  con- 
cerned with  the  creational  mode   rather  than   with  the  crea- 


BUT  THE   REASON   WHICH   ORGANIZES       39 

tional  cause  ;  but  the  mode  cannot  exist  without  the  energies 
or  the  forces  that — operating  either  in  the  organism  or  the 
environment,  or  in  both — accomplish  the  evolution.  Indeed, 
the  theory  expressly  proceeds  upon  the  principle  that  the  only 
forces  it  knows  or  reckons  with  are  those  called  natural,  though 
it  conceives  Nature  in  a  strictly  limited  and  exclusive  sense. 
While,  then,  evolution,  so  far  as  it  is  a  scientific  doctrine, 
is  a  theory  of  the  creational  mode,  yet  where  it  is  repre- 
sented as  an  adequate  account  of  the  history  of  life  upon 
this  planet,  it  becomes  also  a  theory  of  the  creational  cause. 
The  theory  is  thus  philosophical  as  well  as  scientific  ;  and 
though  the  philosophy  may  be  implicit,  yet  it  never  ceases  to 
be  both  active  and  determinative  in  the  science.  The  degree 
in  which  this  is  the  case  will  become  more  obvious  as  we 
proceed. 

We  may  say  that  we  understand  evolution  in  the  field  of 
organic  life  to  mean  the  emergence  of  such  new  organs  or 
such  a  modification  of  old  organs  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
as  secures  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  and  through  it  the  develop- 
ment of  new  species.  We  need  not  too  curiously  describe  or 
consider  the  changes  in  Darwin's  hypothesis  by  later  and 
younger  men  of  science  like  Weismann.  It  is  enough  to  say 
that  the  more  the  process  is  simplified  the  more  complex 
does  it  reci u ire  the  cause  or  the  sufficient  reason  of  the  move- 
ment to  be  ;  and  the  more  urgent  does  the  demand  become 
that  the  action  of  the  cause  be  immediate,  continuous,  uni- 
versal. The  less  we  insist  on  the  transmission  of  acquired 
characters,  the  more  do  we  insist  on  the  sufficiency  of  the 
more  strictly  natural  and  impersonal  causes  that  are  at  work  ; 
the  less  emphasis  we  lay  on  the  achievement  of  the  individual 
for  the  good  of  the  whole,  the  more  emphasis  are  we  com- 
pelled to  lay  on  the  operation  of  the  whole,  and  of  the  forces 
it  represents  on  each  and  every  individual. 

So  far  then  as  concerns  our  present  discussion,  there  are  in 
the  theory  three  ideas  or  positions  that  must  be  noted — Cause, 


40    NATURE  EVOLVES  THE  INVOLVED 

Process,  End.  These  terms  may  here  be  distinguished  thus  : 
"  Cause  "  expresses  the  sufficient  reason  alike  for  the  result 
achieved  and  the  means  necessary  for  its  realization  ;  "  Pro- 
cess "  denotes  the  way  or  method  in  which  this  cause  does 
its  work  ;  while  "  End "  means  the  collective  result,  not 
nature  as  it  terminates  in  biological  forms,  but  nature  as 
it  culminates  in  mind,  and  as  it  lives  in  the  intelligence  of 
man,  with  all  its  experience  and  all  its  history.  The  prob- 
lem, therefore,  that  arises  is  this  :  Are  we  able,  by  the  pro- 
cess of  an  evolution,  conducted  strictly  within  the  terms  of 
Nature  and  by  purely  natural  forces,  to  account  for  the  origin 
of  human  reason  and  the  history  of  all  its  achievements  ?  In 
other  words,  what  evolution  has  to  explain  is  not  nature  and 
life  but  Man  and  Mind  and  History. 

Now  one  thing  is  evident :  the  more  severely  natural  the 
process  is,  the  less  can  we  allow  anything  to  emerge  in  its 
course  which  is  not  really  contained  within  the  terms  of 
the  Nature  which  inaugurated  the  process,  forms  the  bosom 
within  which  it  proceeds  and  the  energies  which  move  it 
onward.  What  Nature  evolves,  Nature  must  have  zVzvolved  ; 
and  to  emphasize  as  natural  both  the  process  that  leads  to 
the  end,  and  the  end  to  which  it  leads,  is  to  bind  ourselves  to 
find  in  the  primary  or  causal  term  of  the  process  the  sufficient 
reason  for  all  that  follows. 

2.  In  working  out  the  problem  which  has  just  been  stated 
we  may  follow  two  methods  which  may  be  termed  respectively 
the  regressive  and  the  egressive.  The  regressive  method 
starts  from  the  completed  process  and  proceeds  backward  step 
by  step  in  search  of  the  factors  and  the  forces  which  have 
produced  the  completion  ;  and  this  regressive  movement  can- 
not terminate  till  the  sufficient  reason  or  the  ultimate  cause 
be  reached.  If  we  follow  the  egressive  method,  we  simply 
reverse  the  procedure,  and  reason  downward  from  the  begin- 
ning or  assumed  cause  through  its  successive  achievements  to 
its  ultimate  issue.  Let  us  take  each  method  in  succession. 


WHENCE   IS   MAN?  41 

A.    THE  REGRESSIVE  METHOD 

Here  we  must  note  the  starting-point  or  premiss  of  the 
argument  :  it  is  the  term  which  Nature,  in  the  process  of  her 
long  development,  has  reached — the  final  page,  which  now  lies 
unfolded  before  us,  of  her  vast  and  varied  history.  That  end 
is  not  represented  by  the  inter-relations  of  plants  and  animals 
under  domestication,  nor  is  it  represented  by  the  organisms 
that  exhibit  the  highest  forms  of  structural  excellence.  The 
point  from  which  we  have  to  start  is  Man,  and  man  is  Mind. 
And  it  is  not  individual  man.  He  is  a  small  being,  even 
though  he  be  a  universe  in  miniature;  he  is  a  simple  problem, 
even  though  he  be  the  measure  of  all  things.  The  man  we 
mean  is  vaster  and  more  complex — collective  man,  with  his 
arts,  his  letters,  his  empires,  his  intellectual  achievements,  his 
ethical  ideals,  his  laws  and  his  religions.  It  is  man  with  all 
the  qualities  that  mark  him  as  a  race,  which,  though  made  up 
of  an  infinite  multitude  of  units,  is  yet  a  great  organic  unit)'. 

(i.)  If,  now,  we  are  to  apply  evolution  as  a  theory  descrip- 
tive of  the  strictly  natural  process  or  method  of  creation,  we 
shall  have  to  explain  everything  that  has  come  to  be  through 
what  was  before  it  and  what  is  around  it.  Let  us  begin, 
then,  by  going  backwards  from  man  one  single  step  and 
coming  to  the  animal.  And  here  our  question  is  as  large 
as  it  is  direct  : — Is  evolution,  as  a  theory  of  the  creational 
process  moving  within  strictly  natural  lines  and  appealing 
to  none  but  natural  forces,  able  to  account  for  man  bv  the 
upward  struggle  of  those  beneath  him?  Some  years  ago 
we  had  eager  and  even  angry  discussions  as  to  man's  place 
in  Nature.  It  was  argued  that  "  man  was  separated  by  no 
greater  structural  barrier  from  the  brutes  than  thev  are  from 
one  another";  and  it  was  further  argued  that  "if  any  pro- 
cess of  physical  causation  can  be  discovered  by  which  the 
genera  and  families  of  ordinary  animals  have  been  produced 
that  process  of  causation  [and  we  note  the  term  '  causation  'J 


42  MAN   AND  APE   IN   NATURAL 

is  amply  sufficient  to  account  for  the  origin  of  Man."  *  And 
this  process  was  said  to  have  been  discovered  in  the  theory 
which  will  ever  be  honourably  associated  with  the  name  of 
Darwin.  A  still  more  audacious  thinker  with  a  wider  out- 
look than  Huxley  had,  like  him,  argued  from  the  structure  of 
the  man-like  ape,  from  similarity  in  the  greater  organs,  from 
the  skull  and  cranial  capacity,  from  hand  and  foot  and  teeth, 
from  texture  and  size  of  the  brain,  that  the  ape  might  be 
called  the  older  form  of  the  man,  and  that  there  was  no 
insuperable  barrier  between  the  man  and  the  ape.2 

Now  let  us  understand  precisely  what  an  argument  of  this 
kind  amounts  to.  There  are,  on  the  one  hand,  when  man 
and  the  ape  are  regarded  simply  as  organisms,  similarities 
and  differences  of  structure  ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
the  persons  or  beings  organized  are  taken  into  account,  there 
are  between  them  specific  differences  of  history  and  achieve- 
ment without  any  corresponding  specific  similarities.  Now, 
the  organic  or  structural  affinities  are  obvious  enough,  and 
the  consequences  they  involve  may  be  drawn  without  any 
recourse  to  a  too  heroic  logic.  What  is  more  flagrantly 
apparent,  and  more  in  need  of  adequate  explanation,  are  the 
historical  and  personal  differences.  Is  it  argued  that  the 
structural  similarities  imply  such  a  genetic  relation  that  the 
man  must  be  regarded  as  the  descendant  of  the  manlike  ape? 
If  so,  is  it  also  argued  that  the  structural  differences  which 
make  the  man  a  new  species,  are  the  causes  of  his  superior 
excellence?  If  not  so,  it  is  obvious  that  the  real  point  at 
issue  is  not  simply  a  question  of  structure,  but  of  personality 
and  its  history.  For  let  us  see  the  facts  that  have  to  be 
explained.  Here  is  a  man-like  ape.  He  is,  as  far  as  history 
is  concerned,  an  older  being  than  man  ;  he  can  boast  a  more 
venerable  ancestry  ;  he  is  a  more  ancient  inhabitant  of  our 

1  Huxley,  Matt s  Place  in  Nature,  p.  146. 

2  Haeckel,    Hist,   of  Creation,  cc.  xxii.  xxiv. — Anthropogenic  (Vierter 
Abschnitt)  ;  cf.  Confession  of  Faith  of  a  Man  of  Science,  p.  38. 


AND   IN   CIVIL   HISTORY  43 

planet,  and  has  had,  therefore,  the  greater  opportunities  a 
longer  course  of  time  have  supplied,  in  which  to  develop  the 
resources  that  are  in  him  and  achieve  his  man-like  apehood. 
But  how  stands  the  case  ?  He  stands  to-day  precisely  where 
his  most  ancient  ancestor  stood  ;  he  cracks  his  nuts  and 
feeds  himself  in  the  ancestral  manner  ;  he  practises  the  old 
arboreal  architecture  ;  he  lives  in  the  old  home  in  the  old 
way,  swings  himself  from  tree  to  tree  by  the  same  organ 
and  with  the  same  dexterity  ;  he  emits  sounds  of  alarm  or 
ferocity  or  affection,  cries  of  defiance  or  of  solicitation,  which 
men  may  try  to  imitate  but  can  only  understand  by  ceasing 
as  much  as  possible  to  be  men  and  becoming  apes.  In 
a  word,  he  began  as  a  brute  and  a  brute  he  remains. 

But  what  of  man?  He  may  have  begun  by  dwelling  in  caves 
and  holes  of  the  earth,  but  he  has  not  continued  to  dwell 
there.  He  has  built  for  himself  the  hut  and  the  wigwam  ; 
he  has  designed  and  erected  the  stately  pleasure-house  ;  he 
has  reared  the  palace  and  has  embosomed  it  in  beauty  ;  he 
has  dreamed  of  temples  for  his  gods  and  cathedrals  for  wor- 
ship, and  he  has  realized  these  in  stones  which  seem  even 
more  lordly  than  his  dreams.  His  earliest  essays  in  art  may 
have  been  rude  pictures  on  the  walls  of  his  cave,  or  on  the 
bones  of  some  animal  he  had  slain  and  eaten,  or  on  his 
cnvn  limbs  or  face,  to  make  him  beautiful  to  his  friends  or 
hideous  to  his  foes.  But  he  has  not  stayed  at  the  stage 
where  he  first  used  tools  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  has  disciplined 
and  trained  himself  in  art  until  there  has  arisen  under  his 
chisel  the  shape  of  a  man  so  passing  fair  that  it  seemed  to 
need  only  speech  to  be  the  man  it  seemed,  or  an  image  of 
his  deity  so  sublime,  so  godlike  and  august,  that  men  who 
have  looked  upon  it  have  said,  "  Lo  !  we  have  beheld  God 
face  to  face";  or  he  has  trained  himself  so  to  mix  his 
colours  and  so  to  handle  his  brush  as  to  make  flowers  bloom 
and  landscapes  to  unfold  their  beauty  on  canvas,  until  men 
have  seen  through  his  eyes  and  from  the  work  of  his  hands 


44         MIND   MAKES   THE   HISTORIES   DIFFER 

more  in  Nature  than  they  had  ever  discovered  for  themselves. 
Man's  social  life  may  have  begun  in  a  state  of  savage  war, 
where  the  strong  man  reigned  and  the  weak  man  went  to 
the  wall ;  he  may  then  have  lived  as  the  animal  that  devours 
its  foes,  even  though  of  its  own  kind,  and  lives  by  plunder, 
by  rapine,  and  by  a  killing  that  is  no  murder.  But  out  of 
that  savage  state  he  slowly  and  painfully  emerged  into  social 
and  political  order,  built  him  up  states  governed  by  laws 
which  judges  impartially  interpret  and  magistrates  administer 
with  justice — laws  which  protect  the  weak,  punish  the  crimi- 
nal, secure  freedom  to  those  who  love  it  and  safety  to  those 
who  have  known  how  to  multiply  the  wealth  and  increase 
the  graces  of  life.  He  has  created  great  empires  that  have 
lived  through  centuries,  developed  civilization,  broadened 
culture,  and  made  history.  Then  his  speech  may  have  begun 
in  rude  cries,  mere  interjections,  now  of  alarm,  now  of  en- 
joyment, now  of  discovery,  even  as  brute  may  call  unto 
brute,  sounding  the  note  of  danger  or  the  signal  for  prey 
found ;  but  he,  by-and-by,  learned  to  weave  words  into 
language — the  most  marvellous  of  all  man's  creations — and 

o         o 

language  into  tales,  to  represent  it  by  pictures,  to  create 
for  it  symbols  and  signs  that  made  the  transient  word  a 
thing  imperishable.  From  his  rude  tales  have  come  great 
literatures  :  the  epic,  with  its  heroes  and  its  battles,  its 
march  of  armies  or  its  wandering  sages,  its  pictures  of 
grand  shapes  that  have  been  or  of  terrible  fates  yet  to 
be  ;  the  lyric,  with  its  cry  of  love,  man  yearning  after  woman, 
woman  alter  man,  and  both  after  God  ;  the  tragedy,  with 
its  tales  of  will  in  conflict  with  destiny,  of  character  at 
war  with  circumstance.  And  this  literature  he  has  made 
thousandfold,  mysterious,  immortal,  in  many  tongues  and 
in  many  times.  He  may  have  started  on  his  new  career  as 
a  being  with  a  capacity  for  religion,  one  who  feared  powers 
invisible  impersonated  in  a  blasted  tree,  a  rude  stone,  a 
whitened  bone,  or  a  running  stream,  but  he  has  not  stood 


MAN  IS  MIND,  THE   BRUTE  MINDLESS         45 

fixed  in  that  rude  faith  ;  he  has  made  him  religions  to  com- 
fort and  to  uplift  his  soul  ;  he  has  believed  in  gods  who  could 
do  gracious  or  awful  things  ;  he  has  come  to  think  of  a  God 
majestic,  sole,  holy,  ineffable,  who  inhabiteth  eternity  ;  to 
think  of  man  as  one  who  looks  before  and  after,  and  who 
follows  his  thought  into  the  eternity  towards  which  it  has 
ever  aspired.  Man  has  been  a  wonderful  creator,  and  his 
creations  have  only  just  begun.  No  day  dawns  that  does 
not  see  some  new  wonder  added  to  the  wondrous  history  of 
the  race  ;  the  century  which  has  just  ended  being  for  invention, 
for  discovery,  for  its  marvellous  enlargement  of  knowledge 
and  increased  sovereignty  over  Nature,  the  most  extraordinary 
of  all  the  crowded  and  glorious  centuries  of  his  existence. 

In  the  face,  then,  of  their  contrasted  histories,  let  us  now  put 
man  and  the  man-like  ape  together  and  ask,  What  is  the 
problem  they  offer  to  science  ?  Do  the  eloquently  minimized 
differences  which  we  find  in  the  structure  of  the  man  as 
distinguished  from  the  man-like  ape,  explain  the  differences 
in  their  histories?  If  they  do,  then  we  ought  to  be  told  how 
such  small  differences  in  structure  have  become  causes  of 
effects  so  wondrously  and  vastly  opposite.  If  they  do  not, 
then  why  speak  as  if  man  and  the  man-like  ape  stood  in  the 
same  system,  and  were  in  any  tolerable  sense  related  as 
ancestor  and  progeny?  When  their  respective  histories  are 
viewed  together  and  honestly  compared,  is  it  true  that  man 
is  in  faculty  as  in  structure  one  with  the  brutes?  Must 
it  not  rather  be  affirmed  that  man  starts  with  some  endow- 
ment which  the  brute  has  not?  If  Darwin  needed  his  first 
form  before  he  could  trace  the  genesis  of  species,  so  no 
less  is  it  true  that  we  must  have  mind  before  the  history 
of  man  becomes  possible  or  capable  of  intellectual  reali/.a- 
tion.  But  if  it  be  mind  that  constitutes  the  differentiation  of 
man  from  brute,  then  to  imagine  that  the  distance  be- 
tween them  is  reduced  by  the  discovery  of  similarities  in 
their  organic  structure,  is  a  mere  irrelevance  of  thought. 


46  WHAT   DARWIN   ASKED 

But  we  have  come  by  another  way  to  the  very  conclusion 
which  was  reached  by  our  previous  argument :  the  reason  or 
mind  which  distinguishes  man  from  the  brute,  relates  him  to 
the  heart  or  secret  of  the  universe.  The  same  intellect  which 
separates  him  from  the  animal,  binds  him  to  the  intelligible  in 
Nature  and  to  the  Intelligence  which  is  above  both  and  ex- 
plains both.  Where  he  is  distinguished  from  the  lower  he 
attains  kinship  with  the  higher;  and  so  our  premiss,  changed 
in  form  but  unchanged  in  essence,  emerges  as  the  reasoned 
conclusion  of  the  discussion,  viz.,  the  noumenal  and  not  the 
phenomenal  explains  man,  and  shows  the  substance  of  his 
being  to  be  one  with  the  essence  of  the  universe  which  he 
perceives  and  construes. 

(ii.)  But  we  have  as  yet  taken  only  a  single  step  in  the  re- 
gressive process,  and  so  must  further  proceed  with  our  back- 
ward search  for  the  sufficient  reason  of  the  Nature  we  know. 
The  stages  would  indeed  be  many  and  our  progress  both  slow 
and  toilsome  were  we  to  pause  over  each  and  there  pursue 
our  analytic  quest — the  birth  of  consciousness,  the  dawn  of 
sentient  life,  the  advent  of  the  animal  and  the  vegetable.  But 
instead  let  us  at  once  step  across  the  successive  periods  and 
down  the  descending  species  of  the  organic  kingdom  until  we 
enter  the  inorganic.  Our  question  now  is,  whether  it  be  pos- 
sible to  find  in  the  physical  energies  or  forces  which  science 
supposes  to  have  preceded  life,  the  cause  of  life,  with  all  its 
forms,  its  infinite  possibilities  and  multitudinous  activities? 
Can  we  imagine  anything  within  the  terms  of  Nature  a; 
Nature  was  before  life  or  mind  were,  or  as  we  must  conceive 
it  to  have  then  been,  which  would  be  a  Sufficient  Reason 
for  the  history  that  was  to  be  ?  Darwin,  as  we  have  just 
seen,  asked  to  be  allowed  to  assume  a  first  or  a  few  forms 
in  order  that  he  might  show  how  the  earth,  as  it  pursued 
its  silent  way  through  space,  was  tenanted  with  living  beings 
and  became  the  arena  of  all  their  works.  But  simple  as  his 
request  seemed,  it  was  a  tremendous  assumption  that  he  asked 


TO   BE   ALLOWED   TO   ASSUME  47 

leave  to  make,  for  it  meant  that  he  wanted  to  start  from  an 
unexplained  Something,  a  mystery,  a  miracle — originated  life, 
though  how  and  why  it  had  originated,  what  cause  adequate 
to  its  production  was  lying  behind,  he  did  not  know  and 
did  not  presume  to  enquire.  He  asked,  in  short,  no  less  a 
gift  in  the  form  of  a  premiss  than  the  old  theologian  asked 
when  he  meekly  took  for  granted  the  creation  of  Adam,  in 
order  that  he  might  deduce  from  him  mankind  and  all  their 
works.  For  Darwin  asked  permission  to  posit  not  only  the 
few  forms  whose  being  had  just  begun,  but  also  the  environ- 
ment within  which  they  lived,  i.e.  the  whole  conception  of 
created  forms  and  a  creative  Nature  already  at  work  upon 
them.  He  thus,  under  this  explicit  petitw  pnncipii,  smuggled 
in  two  of  the  largest  conceptions  which  can  be  formed  by  the 
mind  of  man,  the  very  conceptions  which  have  perplexed  the 
race  into  belief  in  all  the  cosmogonies.  But  it  enabled  him  to 
do  another  and  no  less  important  thing,  viz.,  conceal  from 
himself  the  distinction  between  a  simplified  cause  and  a 
simplified  process  ;  and  this  was  the  more  to  be  regretted  as 
the  rigorous  simplicity  he  intended  to  illustrate  in  his  natural 
process  of  creation  enormously  increased  the  complexity  of 
the  cause  he  so  quietly  assumed.  For  let  us  attempt  to  ima- 
gine the  vision  that  might  have  come  to  a  prescient  mind 
watching  those  parent  forms  in  their  first  blind  struggles  for 
a  hardly  discernible  life,  while  yet  foreseeing  all  that  was  to 
be.  The  vision  would  start  with  the  spectacle  of  a  steaming 
earth  waiting  to  become  the  fruitful  mother  of  all  living 
things,  with  the  simplest  germs  of  organic  being  bedded  deep 
in  her  hot  and  hardening  slime.  As  the  earth  cooled  and  the 
moisture  folded  the  minute  organisms  in  its  damp  but  fer- 
tilizing embrace,  new  and  higher  forms  were  seen  to  multiply, 
vegetation  became  abundant,  gigantic  trees  and  vast  forests 
stood  rooted  in  the  rich  soil  and  raised  their  branches  into 
the  warm  and  liquid  air;  while  there  moved  through  deep 
lagoons  immense  reptiles,  which  Nature,  in  her  first  endea- 


48        MIND   NO   PROCESSION   FROM   MATTER 

vours  at  protection,  clothed  in  coats  of  mail,  seeming  to  think 
that  they  would  not  die  because  their  enemy  could  not  reach 
the  centre  of  their  life.  But  climatic  changes  come.  The 
huge  creatures  vanish,  the  mammal  appears,  and  the  process 
of  evolution  goes  on  till  Nature  teems  with  myriad  forms 
of  organic  life.  And  then  the  supreme  moment  approaches, 
man  steps  upon  the  scene  and  forthwith  begins  to  modify 
the  nature  which  has  been  so  creative,  to  subdue  the  animals 
that  have  been  so  mighty,  to  build  himself  cities,  to  form 
states,  to  speak  with  tongues,  to  develop  arts,  to  create  litera- 
tures, to  formulate  laws,  to  realize  religions, — in  a  word,  to 
create  the  society  and  the  civilization  that  we  know  so  well. 
Now  what  in  the  inorganic  mass  which  it  surveyed  could 
the  prescient  mind  discover  capable  of  accomplishing  these 
things  ?  Nothing  ;  unless  he  conceived  the  mass  as,  though 
inorganic,  yet  capable  of  creating  organic  being,  of  think- 
ing like  himself  so  as  to  create  thought.  But  how  could  he 
so  conceive  it  without  changing  it  from  a  mass  of  conserved 

o        o 

and  correlated  forces  into  the  seedplot  or  seminal  garner  of  all 
that  was  to  be  ?  But  how  could  that  womb  which  was  thus 
pregnant  with  all  the  organs,  all  the  organisms,  all  the  minds 
of  the  future,  be  described  as  dead  ?  Was  it  not  rather  quick 
with  all  the  germs  of  all  the  forms  that  were  waiting  the  touch 
of  time  to  live,  laden  with  all  the  potencies  and  all  the  qualities 
and  all  the  lives  of  the  future?  If,  then,  we  attempt  to  con- 
ceive what  was  before  life  and  mind  as  the  condition  or  cause 
or  factor  of  their  being,  we  must  invest  it  with  the  qualities 
which  enable  it  to  do  its  work.  And  what  is  this  but  turning 
it  from  dead  matter  into  living  spirit? 

B.    THE  EGRESSIVE  METHOD 

(i.)  But  the  question  which  has  just  been  raised  as  to  the 
relation  of  the  primordial  inorganic  forces  to  the  creation  and 
development  of  organic  forms,  can  be  better  discussed  under 


MATTER  NO  MOTHER  OF  MIND      49 

the  head  of  the  egressive  than  of  the  regressive  method.  How 
shall  we  conceive,  how  define  or  describe,  the  stuff  which  was 
before  life  and  was  the  father  of  all  living  things?  It  would  be 
hard  to  set  man  a  severer  or  less  soluble  problem  than  this  : 
to  imagine  or  discover  within  Nature  as  known  to  him  a 
physical  substance,  or  any  concourse  or  combination  of  physi- 
cal elements  or  qualities,  that  could,  within  a  universe  that 
knew  no  life,  cause  life  to  begin  to  be.  The  frankest  terms 
are  here  the  soberest  and  the  truest :  the  thing  is  inconceiv- 
able. It  is  not  simply  that  the  primary  generation  would 
have  to  be  spontaneous,  i.e.  self-caused,  i.e.  miraculous  in  the 
superlative  degree, — for  spontaneous  generation  is  a  thing 
unknown  to  experimental  science,  and  to  biological  observa- 
tion, and  is,  at  best,  but  a  form  under  which  the  operation 
of  an  unknown  cause  is  disguised  ;  but  also  because  matter 
cannot  be  defined  save  in  terms  that  imply  mind.  Whether 
mind  may  be  conceived  without  matter,  is  a  point  that 
may  be  argued ;  but  matter  can  be  represented  in  no  form 
which  does  not  imply  mind.  And  this  may  be  'stated  in  the 
form  of  what  may  be  described  as  a  curious  and  instructive 
law  in  philosophy,  whether  ancient  or  modern.  The  highest 
speculations  concerning  the  ultimate  cause  have  been  expressed 
in  the  terms  of  the  intellect  or  the  reason,  while  those  which 
have  ventured  to  use  physical  or  material  terms  have  had  all 
the  rarity  of  the  exception  which  proves  the  rule.  And  this 
law  is  made  the  more  impressive  by  the  fact  that  the  excep- 
tions apply  mainly  to  the  childhood  of  speculation,  but  the 
rule  to  its  manhood  or  maturity. 

One  of  the  most  characteristic  things  in  modern  thought  is 
the  history  of  the  ultimate  causal  idea  in  the  school  whose 
fundamental  principles  forbade  them  the  use  of  transcen- 
dental terms.  It  would  be  traversing  too  familiar  and  well- 
beaten  paths  to  trace  the  genesis  and  examine  the  basis 
of  Hume's  scepticism  ;  but  this  may  be  said  :  within  the  circle 
which  accepted  his  first  principles  and  followed  his  method 

P.C.I;.  4 


50       EMPIRICISM   BECOMES   A  PSYCHOLOGY 

there  happened  what  can  only  be  described  as  a  paralysis  of 
the  speculative  faculty,  and  the  reduction  of  philosophy  to 
the  limits  and  the  problems  of  a  more  or  less  conjectural 
psychology.  Its  members  assumed,  not  willingly  but  from 
sheer  logical  compulsion,  an  attitude  of  ignorance  or  impotence 
towards  the  problems,  which  had,  by  simply  though  imperi- 
ously demanding  solution  of  the  reason,  been  perhaps  the 
most  potent  educative  agencies  in  the  history  of  our  race  ;  and 
confined  themselves  to  the  question  as  to  how  our  ideas  came 
to  be  associated,  and  so  to  bear  to  man  the  appearance  of  a 
reasonable  order.  Thus  we  have  the  elder  Mill  attempting  an 
"Analysis  of  the  Human  Mind,"  in  its  essence  a  confession  that 
a  psychology  was  the  only  possible  philosophy  ;  and  that  con- 
cerning the  relations  of  thought  and  being,  or  of  the  cause  and 
end  of  being,  "  nothing  whatever  could  be  known."  Comte,  too, 
had,  if  not  a  speculative  soul,  the  hunger  of  the  true  system- 
builder,  satiable  only  by  an  order  that  could  be  formulated, 
ambitious  to  classify  and  organize  knowledge,  to  demonstrate 
the  laws  of  human  progress,  and  to  create  the  only  real  and 
possible  conditions  of  human  happiness.  But  he  understood 
the  empirical  philosophy  he  inherited  from  Hume,  and  knew 
well  the  iron  lines  it  had  drawn,  the  blank  impenetrable  walls  it 
had  built  round  the  spirit,  and  he  loved  logic  too  dearly  to  seek 
to  escape  into  a  freer  air.  So  he  declared  phenomena  to  be 
all  that  man  could  know,  proclaimed  the  search  after  a  First 
Cause  vain,  placed  the  very  word  "  cause "  under  a  rigorous 
ban,  dismissed  psychology  from  the  circle  of  the  sciences,  and 
planted  physiology  in  its  stead.  And  his  early  English  inter- 
preters were  here  specially  emphatic.  One  brilliant  scholar 
G.  H.  Lewes,  wrote  a  History  of  Philosophy,  expressly  to  prove 
that  metaphysics  was  the  search  after  the  illusive,  that  their 
reign  had  ceased,  that  the  birth  of  Positivism  was  the  dawn  of 
a  millennium  when  barren  problems  should  cease  to  trouble  and 
only  fruitful  facts  and  phenomena  occupy  mind.  The  subtle 
and  assimilative  intellect  of  John  Stuart  Mill  felt  the  same 


AND   CEASES   TO   BE   CONSTRUCTIVE         51 

paralyzing  influence.  He  loved  to  be  constructive,  and  was 
so,  though  in  a  less  degree  than  he  desired,  in  politics, 
in  economics,  and  in  formal  logic  ;  but  when  he  came  to 
metaphysics,  he  was  content  with  mere  analytic  criticism 
and  inconclusive  psychology.  And  even  before  he  could 
get  to  it  he  had  to  postulate  three  great  things  :  the  mind, 
the  tendency  of  the  mind  to  expectancy,  and  the  laws  of 
association  ;  and  then  on  this  vast  assumed  and  unreasoned 
basis  he  attempted  to  explain  the  relation  of  mind  to  the 
outer  world.  Yet  he  did  not,  like  Kant,  frankly  recognize 
that  these  assumptions  of  his  were  transcendental  principles, 
a  priori  forms  of  perception,  categories  of  thought  or  factors 
of  knowledge  which  he  had  no  right  to  use.  But  he  hid 
meekly — as  it  were  under  a  proposition  he  need  not  argue — 
the  most  fundamental  of  all  possible  questions  :  What  was 
mind?  Why  had  mind  expectancy?  How  was  it  that  in 
mind  the  laws  of  association  worked?  And  higher  and  more 
transcendental  still  was  the  question,  Whence  did  the  idea 
come,  and  how  was  it  that  it  came  to  mind,  and  was  by  thought 
turned  into  something  absolutely  different  from  the  Nature 
that  sent  it  ?  And  when  he  proceeded  to  define  matter  as  "the 
permanent  possibility  of  sensation,"  what  did  he  define  it  as 
being?  Something  subjective,  dependent  on  mind.  If  matter 
be  "a  permanent  possibility  of  sensation,"  how,  without  the 
sentient  consciousness,  could  we  have  matter?  And  when, 
later,  he  resolved  mind  into  "a  permanent  possibility  of  feel- 
ing," he  carefully  forgot  that  he  had  assumed  mind,  its  ex- 
pectancy and  associative  laws,  in  order  that  he  might  explain 
matter  as  "the  permanent  possibility  of  sensation."  In  a  word, 
Mill's  analysis  was  too  purely  governed  by  the  old  empiricism 
to  allow  him  to  reach  either  subjective  or  objective  reality. 
lie  would  have  been  more  consistent  had  he,  with  Berkelcv, 
confessed  spirit  to  be  the  one  solid  and  enduring  entitv, 
and  matter  a  mere  idea.  Tin's  was  what  he  meant,  but 
what  he  could  not  sav  without  being  forced  to  the  theistic 


52  CAN   MATTER   BE   DEFINED? 

conclusion  of  his  great  predecessor.  And  so  instead  we  had 
both  the  subject  and  the  object  of  knowledge  reduced  to  the 
permanent  possibilities  of  things  unknown. 

But  science  was  suddenly  seized  with  a  speculative  pas- 
sion, begotten  of  two  great  doctrines — the  Conservation  of 
Energy  and  Evolution.  Sleight  of  tongue  is  a  more  illusive 
art  than  even  sleight  of  hand,  and  metaphysics  do  not  be- 
come physics  by  being  stated  in  the  terms  of  "  matter, 
motion,  and  force,"  nor  do  they  turn  into  biology  by  being 
expressed  in  the  formulae  of  natural  selection.  So  impelled 
by  the  speculative  passion  which  made  physical  terms  the 
vehicle  of  metaphysical  ideas,  thinkers  like  Mr.  Lewes 
forgot  their  paralyzed  nescience,  and  began  to  lay  the 
"  foundations  of  a  creed."  Men  of  science  became  adven- 
turous world-builders  ;  awed  us  by  natural  histories  of  crea- 
tion, overawed  us  by  visions  of  our  long  descent,  and  the 
easy  elegance  with  which  they  could  leap  the  boundary 
which  divided  the  organic  from  the  inorganic  kingdom,  and 
find  in  matter  "  the  promise  and  the  potency  of  every  form 
and  quality  of  life."  Their  difficulties  and  our  perplexities 
began  when  they  tried  to  define  matter,  or  to  find  it  with- 
out assuming  the  mind  it  was  to  explain,  or  to  leave  it  in  any 
sense  the  matter  known  to  science  and  yet  deduce  from  it  a 
living  and  organic  Nature.  Goethe's  words  were  gratefully 
recalled  :  "  Matter  can  never  exist  and  be  operative  without 
spirit,  nor  spirit  without  matter."  So  were  Schleicher's : 
"There  is  neither  matter  nor  spirit  in  the  customary  sense, 
but  only  one  thing  which  is  at  the  same  time  both."  Then 
we  had  the  despairing  but  descriptive  phrase  of  the  late 
Professor  Clifford,  "  mind-stuff."  and  Professor  Bain's,  "  One 
substance  with  two  sets  of  properties  ;  two  sides,  the  physical 
and  the  mental  ;  a  double-faced  unity."  But  what  is  this 
save  carrying  back  into  the  beginning  the  dualism  of  the 
living  consciousness?  It  did  not  define  or  describe  the 
primordial  stuff  which  constituted  and  created  the  world, 


GRANT   IT   CAN,    WHAT   THEN?  53 

but  only  expressed  a  distinction  which  came  into  being  with 
the  conscious  Self.  "  Two  sets  of  properties  "  imply  a  mind 
through  whom  they  are  perceived  ;  "  a  double-faced  unity  " 
implies  eyes  to  which  the  faces  appear  ;  and  these  are  but 
attempts  to  get  the  effects  of  mind  out  of  the  primordial 
matter  without  conceiving  the  matter  as  mind. 

(ii.)  But  suppose  we  abandon  all  logical  reservations  and 
make  a  present  of  the  conception  of  matter  to  the  venture- 
some thinker  who  would  deduce  from  it  the  Nature  we 
know,  are  his  difficulties  ended  ?  Nay,  they  are  only  about 
to  begin.  He  is  at  once  faced  by  the  questions :  When 
and  why  did  the  creative  process  commence?  What  moved 
the  atoms  toward  their  miraculous  work?  What  had  they 
been  about  before  ?  W7hy  did  they  begin  then  ?  Why  not 
earlier  ?  Why  not  later  ?  Matter  on  this  hypothesis  has 
always  been  ;  it  is  eternal,  it  is  indestructible,  and  in  its 
existence  that  of  its  properties  is  involved.  Now  however 
far  back  the  primary  movement  is  carried,  eternity  lies 
beyond  it.  Why  in  that  eternity  did  not  the  eternal  matter 
work  itself  into  a  world?  Why  at  this  specific  moment  was 
it  started  on  its  creative  career?  We  may,  with  Democritus, 
imagine  atoms,  quantitatively  but  not  qualitatively  different, 
falling  through  the  void,  the  heavier  by  colliding  against  the 
lighter  causing  a  lateral  movement  that  results  in  their  agirre- 

« ?  *z»  o  •"•> 

gation  and  combination,  and  in  the  generation  of  the  heat 
without  which  we  can  have  no  life.  But  to  conceive  atoms 
tumbling  for  ever  through  infinite  space,  meeting,  and  by 
impact  causing  heat  and  changing  direction  or  form,  yet  ever 
acting  according  to  their  mechanical  properties,  is  not  to  come 
one  whit  nearer  the  understanding  of  how  this  inorganic  mass 
became  the  parent  of  all  organic  being.  It  is  significant  that 
neither  modern  physics,  perhaps  the  most  audacious  in  specu- 
lation of  all  the  sciences,  nor  chemistry,  possibly  the  most 
skilled  in  the  secrets  of  Nature,  has  advanced  us  here  a  single 
step  beyond  Democritus:  instead  of  his  avaytcij,  men  may  use 


54  INTELLIGENCE   AND   EVOLUTION 

the  terms  "  chance  "  or  "  unknown,"  but  they  all  mean  the 
same  thing :  to  matter,  as  science  must  conceive  it,  causation 
of  life,  not  to  speak  of  mind,  is  a  sheer  impossibility. 

But  now  suppose  the  transition  is  made  from  a  world  of 
inorganic  force  to  a  world  of  living  forms,  how  are  we  to 
explain  their  increase  and  development  ?  For  one  thing,  it 
is  impossible  to  imagine  that  the  power  which  produced  the 
first  form  exhausted  itself  in  the  effort  and  thenceforward 
ceased  to  act.  The  growth,  the  multiplication,  and  the 
differentiation  of  organisms  are  but  the  forms  under  which  the 
original  creative  energy  continues  to  operate.  The  inex- 
plicable element  in  the  origination  survives  through  all  the 
later  processes,  though  hidden  away  in  the  ample  folds  of 
the  immense  mantle  which  our  ignorance  names  the  environ- 
ment. And  here  one  instructive  fact  deserves  to  be  noted  : 
in  order  that  the  struggle  for  life  may  be  attended  with 
survival,  attributes  and  acts  of  intelligence  are  ascribed  to 
unintelligent  creatures,  processes,  or  things.  Thus  Mr.  Alfred 
Wallace  praises  Darwin  because  of  the  brilliant  generalization 
he  gives  in  his  work  on  Orchids,  viz.,  "  that  flowers  have 
become  beautiful  solely  to  attract  insects  to  assist  in  their 
fertilization."  But  this  generalization  implies  the  capacity  in 
the  flower  to  feel,  if  not  to  observe,  what  pleases  the  insect ; 
the  ability  to  appeal  to  this  pleasure,  the  desire  to  use  it  for 
personal  ends,  and  the  instinct  or  intuition  that  can  turn 
personal  into  altruistic  acts.  If  it  wrere  not  for  the  meta- 
phors he  borrows  from  mind,  the  biologist  would  never  be 
able  to  make  his  processes  seem  natural.  And  this  means 
that  Nature  is  to  him  alive  with  intelligence  ;  that  it  is  able 
to  accomplish  its  end — the  increase  of  life  and  development 
of  living  forms — only  because  it  appears,  when  all  its  parts 
are  taken  together,  a  sort  of  incorporated  Mind. 

But  though  organic  life  has  been  produced,  Nature  is  not 
yet :  before  she  can  be  a  further  step  must  be  taken  forward 
into  Mind.  But  this  last,  the  most  inexorable  step  of  all,  is 


THE  METAPHYSIC  OF  KNOWING  AND  OF  BEING    55 

the  most  completely  beyond  our  rational  capacity.  For  there 
is  nothing  that  physiology  has  been  so  little  able  to  do  as  to 
discover  the  relation  between  organization  and  consciousness. 
As  Tyndall  once  said,  a  man  can  as  little  prove  any  causal 
relation  between  these  two  as  he  can  lift  himself  by  his  own 
waistband.  The  phenomena  may  be  parallel,  but  they  do 
not  stand  respectively  in  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect. 
We  are  left,  then,  with  a  natural  process  that  leaves,  as 
regards  explanation,  the  main  thing  precisely  where  it  was 
found.  Mind,  in  its  action  and  its  origin,  is  a  great  enigma. 
How  it  emerges  is  as  insoluble  a  mystery  as  what  it  has 
achieved.  But  one  thing  seems  evident,  that  it  can  be  got 
out  of  Nature  only  by  being  deposited  in  Nature  ;  that  what 
constitutes  Nature  has  constructed  Nature,  that  what  makes 
her  capable  of  interpretation  is  one  with  the  condition  that 
makes  the  process  of  knowledge  real  and  actual. 

§    IV.     Conclusions  and  Inferences 

The  issue  of  this  discussion,  then,  seems  to  be  that  we 
cannot  conceive  either  Nature  or  its  creative  work  otherwise 
than  through  Mind.  The  metaphysic  of  knowledge  is  one 
with  the  metaphysic  of  being.  We  may  therefore  express 
our  conclusion  thus  :  The  transcendental  cannot  be  excluded 
from  our  view  of  the  universe,  but  the  transcendental  in 
philosophy  is  the  correlate  of  the  supernatural  in  theology, 
The  former  uses  abstract  speech,  the  latter  employs  concrete 
terms  ;  but  it  is  only  when  the  abstract  becomes  concrete  that 
i*  receives  application  and  reality.  To  affirm  the  transcen- 
dence of  thought  is  to  affirm  the  priority  of  spirit,  for  spirit 
is  but  thought  made  concrete — translated,  as  it  were,  into 
a  personal  and  creative  energy ;  it  is  mind  as  opposed  to 
matter,  a  known  as  distinguished  from  an  unknown,  con- 
ceived as  the  cause  of  all  dependent  being.  And  how  can 
we  better  express  this  thought  in  its  highest  concrete  form 
than  bv  the  ancient  name  God  ? 


56          NATURE   AND   THE   SUPERNATURAL 

But  now  what  is  the  bearing  of  this  discussion  and  con- 
clusion on  the  question  with  which  we  started,  Whether  the 
idea  of  a  supernatural  Person  be  compatible  with  the  modern 
conception  of  Nature  ? 

i.  Let  us  attempt  to  state  what  seem  the  fair  and  logical 
deductions  from  our  argument. 

A.  Nature  takes  a  larger  and  richer  sense  than  is  known 
to  the  physical  sciences  ;  it  includes  thought,  the  whole  mys- 
terious kingdom  of  the  spirit  through  which  it  is  and  for 
which  it  is.  From  this  point  of  view  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  natural  and  the  supernatural  ceases,  or  becomes 
thoroughly  unreal.  For  the  supernatural,  as  commonly 
taken,  denotes  a  cause  or  will  outside  as  well  as  above  Nature, 
opposed  to  it  and  supersessive  of  its  laws  ;  but  here  it  denotes 
a  cause  which  is  as  native  to  Nature  as  reason  or  thought 
is  to  man.  Withdraw  or  paralyze  this  cause,  and  Nature  as 
its  effect  ceases,  i.e.  without  the  supernatural  the  natural  can 
neither  begin  nor  continue  to  be.  But  how  can  we  conceive 
Nature  without  the  idea  which  is  necessary  to  its  very  being 
as  a  complete  and  self-contained  whole?  And  as  it  is  only 
when  our  view  takes  in  the  whole  that  Nature  is  ration- 
ally conceived,  we  can  never  regard  that  as  a  scientific 
interpretation  of  Nature  which  applies  mathematical  processes 
or  laws  to  the  behaviour  of  bodies  in  space,  but  forgets  the 
mind  that  compels  man  to  think  the  pure  ideas  of  his 
reason  ;  which  speaks  of  energy  or  force  but  ignores  the  will 
through  which  man  knows  it  is  ;  and  which  imagines  it  suffi- 

o  o 

cient  to  exhibit  the  genesis  of  a  form  without  feeling  it 
needful  to  find  a  sufficient  reason  for  that  process  of  con- 
tinuous creation  which  we  call  the  history  of  man.  Nature, 
then,  is  not  rationally  conceived  when  the  supernatural  is 
excluded,  but  only  when  it  is  viewed  as  standing  in  and 
through  the  supernatural,  i.e.  when  Nature  is  conceived  as 
constituted  not  by  forces  that  can  be  measured  or  by  energies 
that  struggle  for  life,  but  by  the  thought  which  makes  it  and 


SPIRIT  IS   GOD'S   REAL   CREATION  57 

which  finds  it  intelligible,  that  is,  organizes  and  articulates  it 
into  a  coherent  and  rational  Idea. 

B.  As  the  only  concrete  term  which  can  adequately  de- 
scribe the  creative  Mind  or  Intelligence  is  God,  and  as  the 
created  intellect  is  man,  two  things  follow :  (a)  the  intrinsic 
character  of  the  creation  to  which  God  is  related,  and  (/3) 
the  quality  and  nature  of  His  relation. 

(a)  The  real  creation  of  God  is  Spirit;  and  if  we  attempt 
to  conceive  His  creative  action  simply  under  physical  cate- 
gories, or  to  state  it  in  the  terms  of  physics,  we  shall  never 
either  truly  conceive  or  rightly  describe  it.  In  the  strictest 
sense  matter  has  no  independent  being,  but  spirit  has,  for 
independence  is  made  by  two  things — the  ability  to  know 
and  the  capacity  of  being  known.  Neither  attribute  belongs 
to  matter  per  se.  It  is  a  mere  abstract  till  mind  has,  by 
investing  it  with  qualities,  made  it  concrete  ;  and  thus  were 
mind  withdrawn,  there  would  be  no  matter.  But  while 
mind  may  be  necessary  to  the  concrete  being  of  matter, 
for  matter  mind  has  no  being  ;  neither  can  share  the  other's 
life  ;  for  where  knowledge  does  not  meet  knowledge  there 
can  be  no  fellowship,  no  reciprocity  or  correlativity  of  being. 
And  where  there  is  no  knowledge  the  highest,  if  not  the  sole, 
reality  is  absent  ;  for  what  does  not  know  does  not  really 
exist ;  it  may  have  being  for  another  but  has  none  for  itself. 
It  follows  that  God  and  man  both  are,  since  both  are  capable 
of  knowing  and  of  being  known,  i.e.  each  is  real  both  to 
himself  and  to  the  other  ;  but  neither  is  real  to  the  matter 
which  owes  all  its  actuality  to  mind.  Hence  the  real  pre- 
sence of  God  must  be  stated  not  in  physical  but  in  spiritual 
terms  ;  it  belongs  to  the  sphere  of  rational  experience,  and 
not  to  the  field  of  mechanical  energies.  The  latter  may  be 
an  arena  within  which  the  Divine  will  may  operate  ;  but  the 
former,  as  accessible  to  spirit,  can  receive  and  feel  and  realize 
the  Divine  presence;  in  other  words,  matter  ma}'  be  through 
God's  will  and  to  His  reason,  but  mind  is  open  to  Himself. 


58  THE   INEXHAUSTIBLE   CREATOR 

He  can  fill,  possess,  and  live  within  it  just  because  He  can 
be  for  it ;  and  this  intercommunal  life  is  the  beatitude  of 
God  in  the  creature  and  of  the  creature  in  God. 

(/3)  What  then  constitutes  the  universe  a  reality  to  God 
are  the  spirits  He  has  created  to  inhabit  it,  exactly  as  a  house 
is  a  house  to  a  man  by  virtue  not  of  its  rooms  and  its  furni- 
ture, but  of  the  persons  who  there  live  in  and  through  and 
for  him,  though  the  more  he  cares  for  the  persons  the  less 
will  he  be  indifferent  to  the  furniture  and  the  rooms.  But 
if  this  be  so,  we  may  fairly  infer  that  God  will  not  become 
a  mere  curious  spectator  of  their  ways  and  works,  as  a 
man  may  be  of  the  architecture  and  industry  displayed 
by  a  hive  of  bees  ;  but  that  He  will  remain  in  positive  and 
active  relations  with  them,  all  the  more  present  that  He 
may  be  totally  unperceived.  For  only  thus  can  He  complete 
His  creation,  since,  according  to  its  very  nature,  Spirit  can- 
not be  made  all  at  once,  but  only  by  such  a  continuous 
process  of  discipline  and  instruction  as  will  bring  it  under 
the  law  and  fill  it  with  the  illumination  of  God. 

C.  God,  then,  as  the  Perfect  Reason  and  Almighty  Will 
through  whose  action  and  by  whose  energy  Nature  was  and 
is,  cannot  be  conceived  as  otiose  or  inactive  ;  omnipresence 
is  not  an  occasional,  but  a  permanent  attribute  of  Deity, 
omnipotence  is  not  incidental  or  optional.  He  must  be 
everywhere,  and  wherever  He  is  He  must  be  operative. 
Omniscience  simply  means  the  omnipresent  intellect  in 
exercise.  God  is  the  thought  that  is  diffused  through  all 
space  and  active  in  all  time.  And  this  involves  the  conse- 
quence that  the  form  under  which  His  relation  to  Nature 
ought  to  be  conceived  is  immanence,  though  not  as  exclud- 
ing transcendence  ;  for  the  very  reason  that  requires  the  in- 
terpretative intellect  to  be  transcendent,  requires  also  the 
causal  Intelligence  to  be  the  same.  But  it  is  the  active  inter- 
course of  these  two  that  constitutes  Nature  as  an  intelligible 
whole.  For  the  Divine  immanence  in  Nature  is  inseparable 


AND   THE   CONTINUED  CREATION  59 

from  the  same  immanence  in  mind.  There  is,  so  to  speak,  a 
constant  process  of  intercommunication,  God  with  man  and 
man  with  God.  And  this  means  that  His  beneficence  be- 
comes a  universal  and  continuous  activity.  We  could  not 
imagine  a  Being  with  any  grace  of  character  creating  for  any 
motives  save  such  as  could  be  described  as  good,  still  less 
could  we  conceive  Him  proving  unstable  and  in  the  course  of 
His  providence  changing  to  another  and  lo\ver  will  than  He 
had  in  the  beginning.  If  He  were  moved  to  create,  it  could 
only  be  that  He  might  through  creation  find  a  richer  beati- 
tude ;  and  if  the  creature  was  needful  to  His  blessedness,  He 
must  be  still  more  needful  to  its.  But  if  this  be  so,  it  can 
only  mean  that  His  creative  action  never  ceases  :  the  sabbath 
of  the  Creator  is  found  in  an  activity  which  is  ever  beneficent 
and  never  tires. 

D.  Creation,  then,  is  here  conceived  not  as  a  finished  but 
as  a  continuous  process.  The  will  of  God  is  the  energy  of 
the  universe  :  uniform  and  permanent  in  quantity,  yet  express- 
ing itself  in  modes  of  an  infinite  variety.  Nature  without  the 
supernatural  Will  were  a  vaster  miracle,  or  rather  an  infinite 
series  of  vaster  miracles,  than  Nature  realized  through  it  ;  but 
a  concluded  creation  would  be  more  miraculous  still,  for  it 
could  only  -ignify  an  exhausted  universe  and  a  dead  Deity. 
What  do  the  theories  of  energy  and  evolution  mean  but  the 
continuance  of  the  creative  process?  But  if  new  forms  in 
biology  have  emerged, — if  from  however  mean  an  origin,  in  a 
mode  however  low,  Mind  once  began  to  be,  why  may  not  new 
and  higher  types  appear  in  the  modes  and  forms  of  being 
known  to  history  as  politics,  ethics,  religion  ?  In  other  words, 
mav  not  the  very  Power  which  determined  the  appearance  of 
the  first  form,  and  the  whole  course  of  evolution  from  it, 
determine  also  the  appearance  of  creative  Persons  in  history 
and  of  all  the  events  which  may  follow  from  their  appearance? 
Might  we  not  describe  the  failure  of  the  fit  or  the  needed  man 
to  appear  at  some  supreme  moment  as  a  failure  which  affects 


60  THE   HIGHEST   THING   IN   NATURE 

the  whole  creation  ?  And  would  not  the  work  he  did  for  God 
be  the  measure  of  the  degree  of  the  Divine  Presence  or 
quantity  of  the  Divine  energy  immanent  within  him? 

2.  It  seems,  then,  fair  to  conclude  that  so  far  from  the 
idea  of  a  supernatural  Person  being  incompatible  with  the 
modern  idea  of  Nature,  it  is  logically  involved  in  it.  That 
idea  lives  and  moves  and  has  its  being  in  the  mysterious 
or,  let  us  frankly  say,  the  miraculous.  We  begin  in  mystery  ; 
we  live  in  mystery  ;  and  in  mystery  we  end  ;  and  what  are  we 
but  symbols  or  parables  of  the  vaster  life  of  the  whole  ?  But 
yet  the  key  of  all  mysteries  is  man.  The  first  and  last,  the 
highest  and  the  surest  thing  in  Nature,  is  the  thought  which 
explains  Nature,  but  which  Nature  cannot  explain.  And  the 
thought  which  Nature  embodies  has  been  progressive,  has 
moved  upwards  to  Mind,  and  a  mind  that  feels  its  kinship 
with  the  Source,  the  Secret,  and  the  End  of  all  this  mysterious 
system.  Would  it  not  be  absolutely  consistent  with  the 
whole  past  history  of  the  creative  action  as  written  in  the 
living  forms  which  have  dwelt  and  struggled  on  our  earth, 
that  the  Creator  should  do  for  the  higher  life  of  man  what  He 
has  done  for  the  lower- — create  the  first  form, — i.e.  first  not  in 
the  chronological  but  in  the  logical  and  essential,  or  typical 
and  normative,  sense — the  form  after  and  from  and  through 
which  the  higher  life  may  be  realized  ?  Whether  He  has  done 
so  is  a  question  which  must  be  investigated  and  determined 
like  any  other  reputed  matter  of  fact.  It  is  enough  if  our 
argument  here  has  prevented  it  being  decided  by  a  high  and 
rigorous  method  of  a  priori  logic  or  presupposition. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE   PROBLEM   AS   AFFECTED   BY   THE    PHILOSOPHY   OF 

ETHICS 

§  I.      The  Problems  Raised  by  Man  as  an  Ethical  Being 

THE  argument  which  has  so  far  been  pursued  has 
proceeded  on  the  principle  that  man  is  the  inter- 
pretation as  well  as  the  interpreter  of  Nature.  What  is  most 
characteristic  of  him  is  thought,  and  thought  is  exactly  the 
reality  which  no  physical  theory  of  creation  can  explain.  He- 
is  not  only  an  object  of  knowledge,  but  he  is  the  person  who 
knows  ;  and  there  is  no  science  which  does  not  implicitly 
posit  him  as  intelligence  and  Nature  as  intelligible.  But  man 
is  more  than  a  being  whom  the  metaphysics  of  knowledge 
may  attempt  to  explain  ;  for  he  is  not  summed  up  in  the 
category  of  intellect.  He  is  a  doer  ;  he  can  and  does  act ; 
and  his  actions  have  specific  qualities  which  are  judged 
approvingly  or  disapprovingly  alike  by  himself  and  the 
society  within  which  he  lives.  The  judgment,  whether  by 
the  spectator  or  by  the  doer,  as  to  the  specific  quality  of  an 
action  is  largely  affected  by  its  being  regarded  as  the  man's 
own.  He  believes  himself,  and  is  believed  by  others  to  be 
able  to  act  or  not  to  act.  If  compulsion  determines  con- 
duct, then  judgment  does  not  so  much  concern  itself  with 
him  as  with  the  power  that  compels  him.  Approval  or  dis- 
approval of  conduct  is  thus  conditioned  by  the  belief  in 
freedom  of  choice,  in  the  ability  to  will  freely.  But  this 
capability  to  do  or  refuse  to  do,  with  the  judgment  it  con- 


62        LAW   WHETHER   PUBLIC   OR   PRIVATE 

ditions,  further  implies  that  there  is  a  standard  which  ought 
to  govern  the  man's  conduct  but  which  may  not  be  allowed 
to  do  it.  In  other  words,  there  is  a  law  which  he  ought  to 
obey,  though  he  may  not  do  as  he  ought. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  man  is  not  simply  an  isolated  unit ; 
he  is  an  integral  part  of  a  social  unity.  He  is  a  member 
of  a  family,  which  is  a  sort  of  organism  whose  varied  organs 
stand  in  relation  to  each  other  as  well  as  to  a  wider  whole  ; 
and  the  family  is  liable  to  be  judged  in  the  same  way 
as  the  man,  its  character  and  collective  conduct  falling  into 
similar  categories  of  good  and  bad.  right  and  wrong,  virtuous 

O  O  "  O  O ' 

and  vicious.  The  family  in  its  turn  stands  within  the  larger 
society  of  a  city  or  a  tribe  ;  and  the  city  or  tribe  stands  in 
the  still  wider  society  of  the  State.  And  law,  written  or 
unwritten,  again  appears  as  regulating  the  relations  and 
actions  of  these  persons  and  communities, — the  conduct  of 
the  units  in  the  family,  and  of  the  family  as  a  whole,  to 
the  city,  to  the  tribe,  or  to  the  State,  and  also  the 
acts  and  relations  of  the  city,  tribe,  or  State  to  both  in- 
dividuals and  family.  The  State  regards  certain  actions  as 
noxious,  certain  others  as  innocuous.  It  protects  both  itself 
against  the  noxious  and  the  individual  in  the  performance 
of  the  innocuous  act  ;  and  if  it  has  to  judge  of  certain 
overt  actions  done  by  one  citizen  or  family  to  another  citizen 
or  family,  it  bases  its  judgments  upon  some  positive  law  or 
principle  of  equity  as  between  man  and  man  or  citizen  and 
citizen.  The  standard  by  which  the  individual  judges  may 
be  termed  "  moral  "  ;  the  standard  by  which  the  State  judges, 
may  be  termed  "  civil  "  or  "  criminal  "  or  "  natural  "  law  ;  but 
in  every  case  the  standard  of  judgment  is  rooted  in  moral 
ideas  which  affect  or  condition  the  sentence  pronounced.  We 
thus  find  that  judgment  on  the  acts  of  men  and  communities 
implies  the  qualitative  character  of  their  actions  :  they  are 
praised  or  blamed  according  as  their  qualities  are  judged 
to  be  good  or  bad. 


JUDGES   QUALITY   OF   ACTIONS  63 

Then  men,  tribes,  cities,  societies,  and  States  exist  in  almost 
every  possible  condition  of  culture,  from  the  most  savage  to 
the  most  highly  civilized  ;  but  amid  all  the  differences  which 
distinguish  these  varied  conditions  there  is  a  single  unifying 
idea — a  certain  similarity  in  the  essence,  if  not  in  the  form,  of 
their  moral  judgments.  It  is  easy  indeed  to  indicate  degrees 
in  the  laxity  or  elasticity  of  moral  standards,  to  notice  how  at 
certain  stages  of  progress  or  among  certain  peoples  lying  may 
be  regarded  as  almost  a  virtue,  stealing  as  a  necessary  if  not 
a  natural  thing.  But  this  has  to  be  noted — that  the  lying 
which  is  held  to  be  better  than  truth  is  the  lie  that  is  not 
found  out  ;  the  theft  that  is  applauded  is  that  which  is  so 
cunningly  conducted  as  not  to  be  discovered.  In  other 
words,  the  favourable  judgment  depends  on  the  thing  being 
taken  for  its  opposite  ;  if  found  out,  it  is  judged  according  to 
its  true  quality.  Public  law  nowhere  endorses  the  lie  or 
condones  the  theft  ;  when  it  speaks,  the  judgment  it  ex- 
presses is  moral.  In  order  to  be  approved  law  must  be  just 
when  it  judges,  though  it  cannot  always  command  the  evi- 
dence that  enables  it  to  be  what  all  men  feel  it  ought  to  be. 

We  may  say,  then,  that  in  universal  law,  universal  custom, 
and  universal  language  we  have  witnesses  to  the  fact  that 
when  man,  whether  he  be  an  individual  or  a  community, 
judges  actions,  whether  those  of  a  person  or  a  State,  he  does 
so  according  to  a  standard  which  must  be  characterized  as 
moral. 

§    II.     Empiricism  in  Knoivlcdgc  and  in  Ethics 

This  brings  us  to  our  primary  and  fundamental  problem. 
How  are  we  to  explain  the  origin  of  these  moral  judgments? 
What  is  their  basis  ?  Where  is  the  reason  for  the  unity 
in  moral  idea  which  pervades  all  communities  in  the  several 
stages  of  their  social  being? 

I.  There  is  an  intimate  connection  between  the  metaphysics 
of  knowledge  and  the  metaphysics  of  ethics  ;  they  represent 


64  SOURCES   OF   MORAL   IDEAS 

different  sides  of  the  same  thing.  If  we  need  the  a  priori 
elements  of  the  understanding  in  order  that  knowledge  may 
be  conceived  as  possible,  we  need  no  less  in  human  nature 
transcendental  moral  elements  in  order  that  the  genesis  of  our 
moral  actions  and  the  reason  of  our  moral  judgments  may  be 
understood.  And  so  if  a  metaphysic  supposes  the  mind  to  be 
a  sheet  of  white  paper  on  which  Nature  writes  her  marvellous 
story,  then  it  must  also  suppose  that  all  our  moral  ideas  and 
judgments  are  creatures  of  experience,  due  to  what  man  suffers 
rather  than  to  what  he  has  the  faculty  to  achieve.  There 
is,  indeed,  a  difference  between  the  process  of  knowledge  and 
the  evolution  of  morals.  The  process  of  knowledge  is  con- 
ceived as  due  to  the  action  of  Nature  through  sense  upon 
what  must  still  be  spoken  of  as  mind.  But  moral  ideas  must 
be  represented  as  acquired  not  so  much  directly  from  Nature 
as  indirectly  through  society,  or  from  the  action  of  man 
upon  man,  i.e.  the  interaction  of  the  individual  who  struggles 
for  life  and  the  society  that  either  struggles  against  him  as 
a  noxious  force,  or  struggles  to  use  him  as  an  atom  in  its 
organism  that  may  increase  the  energy  needed  for  its  own 
larger  and  more  eventful  movement.  If  the  individual  be 
thought  to  acquire  his  moral  ideas  through  the  experiences 
he  undergoes  in  his  social  medium,  they  will  be  conceived  as 
ideas  that  contribute  to  his  fuller  being,  to  the  maintenance 
and  development  of  his  energies,  to  the  use  he  can  get  out  of 
life,  or,  in  a  word,  to  his  pleasure  or  his  happiness.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  factor  of  his  moral  ideas  be  construed  as  the 
society  in  which  he  lives,  then  its  function  will  be  to  implant 
itself  within  him,  to  get  him  to  judge  as  it  judges,  to  become, 
in  a  word,  an  epitome  of  its  mind,  a  minister  to  its  wealth, 
an  agent  of  its  well-being.  According  as  the  one  standpoint 
or  the  other  be  adopted,  the  regulative  standard  of  judgment 
will  differ.  In  the  one  case  it  will  be  self-interest,  in  the 
other  case  it  will  be  the  communal  interest — the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  number. 


PLEASURE   AS   STANDARD   OF   VALUE        65 

2.  Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  combine  these 
points  of  view  with  greater  or  less  success.  In  Hobbes  we 
find  the  theory  in  a  courageously  individualistic  form.  Pleasure 
is  the  standard  of  right  ;  the  action  that  most  conduces  to 
present  happiness  is  best.  Men  call  the  actions  that  please 
virtues  ;  the  actions  that  displease  vices.  Action  depends  on 
the  will  ;  the  will  depends  on  the  opinion  of  the  good  or  evil 
which  the  act  or  its  omission  is  to  bring  :  therefore  all  action 
has  its  cause  in  the  appetite  for  pleasure.  The  highest  form  of 
pleasure  is  glory,  or  to  have  a  good  opinion  of  one's  self,  or, 
more  decently  expressed,  it  is  to  love  and  to  have  power. 
Charity  is  but  a  form  of  this,  for  it  consists  in  a  man  "finding 
himself  able  not  only  to  accomplish  his  own  desires,  but 
also  to  assist  other  men  in  theirs."  Yet  so  far  is  Hobbes 
from  thinking  that  we  are  bound  to  contribute  to  another's 
happiness  that  he  regards  our  own  conscious  pre-eminence 
as  the  condition  of  the  highest  enjoyment.  Hence  he  de- 
scribes wit  or  laughter  as  enjoying  "  the  sudden  imagination 
of  our  own  odds  and  eminency,"  or,  what  is  its  correlative, 
"another  man's  infirmity  or  absurdity."  It  "  proceedeth 
from  a  sudden  conception  of  some  ability  in  himself  that 
weigheth,"  or  "  in  the  elegant  discovering  and  conveying  to 
our  minds  some  absurdity  of  another."  The  pleasures  of 
memory  consist  in  remembering  some  happy  thing  that 
occurred  to  oneself,  or  some  miserable  fate  that  befel  a 
neighbour  or  a  rival.  This  is  a  sort  of  colossal  egoism,  born 
of  the  idea  that  the  strongest  man  is  the  best,  that  might 
is  right,  and  that  he  who  can  impose  his  will  on  others 
and  make  them  serve  his  ends,  simply  because  they  are  his 
is  the  lawgiver  and  king. 

Hume,  with  more  subtle  skill,  and  a  greater  sense  of  what 
was  needed  to  make  a  doctrine  agreeable  to  the  average  man, 
endeavoured  to  reconcile  the  two  points  of  view,  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  social,  by  saying  that  while  the  act  that 
promotes  pleasure  is  right,  it  is  pleasure  seen,  as  it  were,  from 


66          PAIN   AND  PLEASURE   AS   MASTERS 

the  standpoint  of  society.  "  Whatever  produces  satisfaction 
is  denominated  virtue,"  "  everything  which  gives  uneasiness 
in  human  actions  is  called  vice."  If  "the  injustice  is  so  dis- 
tant from  us  as  no  way  to  affect  our  interest,  it  still  dis- 
pleases because  we  consider  it  as  prejudicial  to  human 
society."  Hence  duty  is  the  action  promotive  of  happiness 
as  it  appears  not  to  the  narrow  self,  but  to  his  larger  environ- 
ment ;  or,  in  a  word,  personal  conduct  viewed  as  society  views 
it.  Interest  and  sympathy  are  thus  the  sole  sources  of  our 
moral  obligations.  When  an  action,  seen  as  society  sees  it, 
tends  to  promote  happiness,  it  gives  pleasure,  and  is  right.  If, 
seen  as  society  sees  it,  it  tends  to  promote  unhappiness,  it  gives 
pain,  and  so  is  wrong.  The  sense  of  duty  is,  therefore,  the  social 
feeling  implanted  in  the  breast  of  the  individual.  Conscience 
is  the  judgment  of  society  expressed  as  self-judgment. 

Jeremy  Bentham  put  the  matter  in  a  franker  way.  "Nature 
has  placed  mankind  under  the  governance  of  two  sovereign 
masters,  Pain  and  Pleasure."  They  tell  us  "  what  we  ought 
to  do,  as  well  as  determine  what  we  shall  do."  To  their 
throne  the  standard  of  right  and  wrong  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  chain  of  causes  and  effects  on  the  other,  are  bound. 
"  The  community  is  a  fictitious  body";  its  interest  is  but  "the 
sum  of  the  interests  of  the  several  members  who  compose 
it."  And  interest  means  the  thing  or  action  which  in  the 
case  of  the  individual  "  tends  to  add  to  the  sum  total  of  his 
pleasures,  or  to  diminish  the  sum  total  of  his  pains."  Here, 
then,  is  the  final  as  well  as  the  efficient  cause  of  man's 
actions,  and  the  standard  by  which  they  are  to  be  judged. 
Those  actions  that  make  for  pleasure  are  right ;  those  actions 
that  make  for  pain  are  wrong.  To  men,  therefore,  as  moral 
beings  there  exist  only  two  things — agents  and  instruments 
of  pleasure.  The  man  himself  is  the  agent,  other  men  are 
the  instruments  ;  and  their  value  to  him  is  their  power  to 
contribute  toward  this  end,  though  the  end  is  taken  not  as 
personal  simply,  but  as  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 


"OUGHT"   IN  THE   ETHICS   OF   UTILITY       67 

number.  This  being  his  standard  of  right,  Bentham  was, 
quite  consistently,  anxious  to  get  rid  of  the  too  absolute 
sense  of  duty  which  had  come  into  English  ethics  under  the 
name  of  Conscience;  and  so  he  held  that  the  evil  thing  in 
morals,  the  mark  of  the  pedant,  "  the  talisman  of  arrogancy, 
indolence,  and  ignorance,"  was  the  word  "ought,"  "an  authori- 
tative impostor,"  which  might  be  tolerated  in  the  other  sciences, 
but  ought  to  be  expelled  from  the  science  of  ethics.  Yet  even 
he  was  compelled  to  concede  something  to  this  imperious 
moral  sense.  We  may  say  of  an  action  "  conformable  to  the 
principle  of  utility"  that  it  "ought"  to  be  done  :  in  such  a  case 
the  word  has  a  meaning ;  otherwise  it  has  none.  Bentham's 
disciple,  James  Mill,  argued  that  the  agreeable  and  pleasant 
were  the  same  thing,  and  that  all  actions  done  for  the  agree- 
able, approximately  or  remotely,  were  right.  But  his  illus- 
trious son  introduced  a  famous  distinction,  the  full  significance 
of  which  we  shall  see  by-and-by,  between  the  qualities  of 
pleasures  ;  and  he  proposed  by  this  qualitative  distinction  to 
enable  man  to  determine  which  actions  were  the  more  and 
which  were  the  less  excellent  and  obligatory. 

3.  Now  these  systems  suggest  two  remarks.  First,  while 
they  proceeded  on  the  principle  that  man  is  a  natural  being 
governed  by  natural  impulses — especially  the  impulse  to  seek 
happiness,  in  order  to  a  larger  and  richer  life — yet  as  systems 
of  ethics  they  were  attempts  to  moralize  nature,  i.e.  they  con- 
ceived man  as  if  he  were  other  and  more  than  a  mere  natural 
being.  For  they  were  not  simply  theories  explanatory  of 
conduct,  but  they  were  even  more  schemes  regulative  of  life, 
ideals  of  a  better  and  more  happily  ordered  being  than  Nature 
knew.  They  were  not  merely  hypotheses  of  a  science  which 
tried  to  co-ordinate  phenomena,  but  they  were  intended  as 
guides  to  life,  explaining  principles  and  ends  of  action  in 
order  that  they  might  be  more  easily  and  completely  reali/.ed 
of  men.  Thus  they  did  not  deal  with  hunger  in  the  man  as  if 
it  had  been  the  same  in  quality  and  character  as  hunger  in 


68  THE   PERSON   AND  SOCIETY 

the  tiger.  The  instinct  to  satisfy  appetite  exists  in  both,  but 
no  code  of  ethics  would  have  any  significance  for  the  tiger, 
and  no  body  of  men  would  judge  concerning  his  attempts  to- 
satisfy  his  instincts  and  to  escape  famine  as  they  would 
judge  concerning  the  acts  of  a  man.  The  very  attempt, 
therefore,  to  interpret  man  ethically  implied  that  he  was  more 
than  a  natural  being,  that  he  transcended  nature,  that  his 
transcendence  ought  to  be  progressive  in  its  quality,  and  that 
a  completely  moral  state  was  one  where  laws  proper  to  man 
governed  men  :  creatures  merely  natural  could  not  be  gov- 
erned by  such  laws. 

But,  secondly,  these  earlier  ethical  thinkers  had  to  remain 
individualists  even  when  laying  most  emphasis  on  the  social 
sanction.  The  experience  they  thought  of  was  personal ; 
each  man  had  to  acquire  his  own.  The  result  was  that  the 
only  form  in  which  society  could  operate  on  him  was  by  its 
positive  forces  and  institutions,  its  methods  of  education,  its 
systems  of  law  and  penalty  ;  and  the  only  way  in  which  he 
could  realize  the  influence  of  society  was  by  imaginatively 
occupying  its  standpoint  and  judging  himself  according  to 
its  standards.  This  involved  so  limited  an  experience,  and 
so  arbitrary  a  method  of  acquiring  and  exercising  moral 
judgments,  that  the  system  inevitably  broke  down  in  the 
very  hands  of  its  builders  ;  for  it  could  not  but  fail  to  estab- 
lish any  real  continuity  or  organic  relation  between  past  ex- 
perience and  the  living  man,  or  between  the  organized  society 
and  the  unit  that  it  had  to  deal  with,  and  that  lived  within 
its  bosom. 

§  III.     Ethics  and  Evolution 

I.  But  even  more  in  ethics  than  in  metaphysics  the  new 
scientific  speculation  has  made  itself  felt.  The  theory  of 
evolution  in  particular  has  radically  affected  our  question. 
For  it  has  supplied  two  important  factors  of  our  rational  and 
moral  experience — the  idea  of  transmission  and  inheritance, 


BEFORE   AND   ATFER   EVOLUTION  69 

and  the  idea  of  unlimited  time.  Before  two  incommensur- 
ables  had  faced  each  other :  (a)  the  ephemeral  individual 
without  any  experience  behind  him,  who  had  to  acquire 
moral  ideas,  exercise  moral  judgments,  and  realize  moral 
character  within  the  limits  of  a  brief  existence  ;  and  (/3)  the 
permanent  society,  which  had  in  its  continued  being  energies 
and  an  experience  that  left  its  units  helpless  in  its  hands. 
All  that  was  needed  was  for  the  society  so  to  impress  itself 
by  means  of  its  sanctions  on  the  transient  individual,  that  he 
should,  even  for  the  brief  season  of  his  present  existence,  be- 
come a  vehicle  of  its  spirit,  or  a  means  to  its  end.  But  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  at  any  rate  in  its  older  and,  possibly, 
still  more  orthodox  form,  made  experience  a  thing  more 
or  less  transmissible,  and  turned  acquired  characters  into 
a  species  of  heritable  property.  And  so  the  individual, 
though  transient,  became  through  his  inheritance  in  a  sense 
as  permanent  as  the  society  around  him.  He  had  within 
him  tendencies,  tempers,  passions,  traits  that  descended  to 
him  from  innumerable  ancestors,  running  back  into  imme- 
morial time,  and  made  him,  as  it  were,  the  sum  of  all  their 
experience,  the  embodiment  of  what  they  had  by  action 
and  experiment  learned  to  become.  And  as  the  time 
during  which  the  process  went  on  was  without  limit,  the 
result  corresponded  to  what  was  beyond  and  before  personal 
existence,  rather  than  to  what  was  around  and  within  himself. 
The  experience  that  he  thus  inherited  from  his  vast  ancestry 
became  in  him  a  sort  of  intuition,  the  correlative  in  man 
to  instinct  in  the  brute  ;  and  his  acts,  while  those  of  an 
ephemeral  individual,  yet  proceeded  from  one  who  was  the 
resultant  of  all  his  ancestors,  and  the  vehicle  for  the  trans- 
mission of  their  qualities  to  all  his  descendants. 

There  are  two  forms  in  which  this  relation  of  evolution  to 
ethics  has  been  presented  :  one  where  it  represents  the  view 
of  a  modest  naturalist,  the  other  in  which  it  represents  the 
dream  of  a  more  venturesome  metaphysician. 


70  DARWIN'S   EVOLUTION   OF   ETHICS 

(a)  Darwin  saw  that  his  theory  must  be  applied  to  man  as 
well  as  to  animals,  and  assumed  a  law  of  continuity  that  re- 
quired our  whole  nature,  social,  moral,  and  intellectual,  to  be 
derived  by  a  process  of  variation  and  development  from  the 
rudimentary  forms  discoverable  in  the  lower  animals.  Their 
instincts  were  compared  with  the  faculties  of  man,  especially 
as  he  exists  in  the  savage  state  ;  and  it  was  argued  that  the 
social  instinct  which  made  the  approbation  of  the  tribe  act  as 
a  law  to  its  members,  was  the  mother  of  the  moral  faculty 
or  sense.  But  the  social  instinct  could  more  easily  explain 
uniformity  than  difference,  while  it  was  upon  difference  more 
than  uniformity  that  growth  depended.  Hence  these  variations 
in  development  had  to  be  conceived  as  due  not  simply  to  the 
two  factors  of  organism  and  environment,  evolved  and  guided 
by  natural  selection  and  the  struggle  for  existence,  but  also, 
in  the  last  analysis,  more  or  less  to  what  may  be  termed 
accidents.  There  was  no  point  more  happily  or  extensively 
illustrated  by  Mr.  Darwin  than  the  arbitrary  character  of  the 
fancy  or  the  taste  which  in  the  lower  races  guided  selection, 
whether  sexual  or  natural  ;  and  where  the  selection  is  arbi- 
trary it  is  under  the  rule  of  chance  or  circumstances.  Yet  he 
recognized  no  greater  or  more  potent  factor  of  the  social 
framework,  and  therefore  of  the  moral  sense.  We  may  say, 
then,  that  he  so  applied  the  principle  of  accidental  or  occa- 
sional variations  to  the  growth  of  moral  ideas  or  feelings  as  to 
leave  them  incidents  that  happened  in  the  course  of  things 
rather  than  products  of  any  reason,  personal  or  collective. 
The  accidents  indeed  to  which  they  were  due  were  condi- 
tioned by  the  operation  of  Nature  ;  but  still  they  were  things 
that  observation  could  not  explain  otherwise  than  by  saying 
they  might  or  might  not  have  occurred. 

(/?)  But  a  philosophical  theory  of  evolution  cannot  allow  a 
place  within  it  to  the  accidental,  and  so  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
has  attempted  to  eliminate  the  notion  of  accident  by  enun- 
ciating the  principle — which,  by  the  way,  was  cogently  stated 


SPENCER'S   "IDEAL   CONGRUITY  "  71 

in  almost  identical  terms  by  Hobbes — that  the  "conduct 
which  conduces  to  life  in  each  and  all  "  is  good  ;  that  "  plea- 
sure somewhere,  at  some  time,  to  some  being  or  beings,  is  as 
much  a  necessary  form  of  moral  intuition  as  space  is  a  neces- 
sary form  of  intellectual  intuition  "  ;  that  it  is  so  because 
pleasure  makes  for  the  conservation  of  life,  and  the  tendency 
of  every  organized  being  is  to  conserve  its  life  ;  and  that  the 
struggle  to  conserve  life  during  the  long  periods  of  evolution 
has  resulted  in  the  discovery  of  those  acts  which,  by  beget- 
ting pleasures,  most  tend  to  its  conservation.  In  this  theory, 
then,  two  things  have  to  be  noted  :  (a)  the  objective  end 
which  governs  the  process  ;  and  (/3)  the  subjective  faculties 
and  judgments  which  the  process  creates.  The  end  is  con- 
tained in  Mr.  Spencer's  notion  of  the  life  for  which  all  beings 
struggle,  and  towards  whose  fuller  realization  the  conduct 
qualified  as  good  conduces.  Life  consists  in  "  the  continuous 
adjustment  of  internal  relations  to  external  relations,"  or,  in 
the  terms  of  the  more  familiar  formula,  the  adaptation  of 
organism  to  environment.  Hence  the  conduct  which  pro- 
motes this  adjustment  is  good,  and  the  more  it  promotes  it 
the  better  the  conduct  becomes.  Moral  progress  is  thus 
movement  towards  the  "ideal  congruity,"  which  is  the  life  of 
"the  completely  adapted  man  in  the  completely  evolved 
society."  But  the  struggle  towards  this  end  is  a  process 
which  creates  the  moral  sense.  "Experiences  of  utility,  or- 
ganized and  consolidated  during  all  past  generations  of  the 
human  race,  have  been  producing  nervous  modifications"; 
and  these,  "by  continued  transmission  and  accumulation," 
have  become  in  us  instincts  or  intuitions  which  discern  the  fit 
action,  and  create  the  feeling  of  obligation.  In  this  process, 
of  course,  actions  which  differentiate  pleasures  are  qualita- 
tively distinguished,  the  higher  being  the  more  conservative 
of  life,  the  lower  the  less  ;  and  so  the  total  result  is  an 
evolution  of  ethics  that  are  in  a  sense  at  once  intuitional  and 
empirical,  showing  the  moral  experience  of  the  race  realized 


72     ARE  ACQUIRED  QUALITIES  TRANSMITTED? 

and  articulated  in  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  in  the  organization  of  society. 

2.  On  the  relation  of  evolution  to  ethics  as  thus  stated 
it  may  be  remarked  : 

(i.)  The  question  of  time  is  not  so  vital  as  it  seems.  The 
past  into  which  we  are  taken  is  not  living  but  dead  ;  it  is 
largely  the  past  of  organisms  that  were,  as  imagined  by 
minds  that  are.  The  problem  concerns  mind,  but  by  no  pro- 
cess can  we  out  of  petrified  bones  get  a  mental  psychology. 
The  past  we  recreate  is  made  in  our  own  image  ;  it  is  turned 
into  a  stupendous  man,  individualized,  personified.  And 
when  that  is  done,  what  is  brought  out  of  it  is  only  what  we 
have  put  into  it ;  it  is  a  past  read  not  as  it  lived  in  fact,  but 
as  it  lives  in  the  mind  of  the  speculative  thinker.  In  other 
words,  the  length  of  time  during  which  the  creative  process 
endures  does  not  make  the  creation  less  miraculous,  espe- 
cially as  the  mind  which  dreams  the  process  is  not  explained 
by  its  dreams. 

(ii.)  We  have  to  take  evolution  here  with  the  important 
modern  qualification  that  the  transmission  of  acquired  charac- 
ters or  qualities  is  a  very  dubious  hypothesis.  The  younger 
evolutionists  argue  that  you  have  no  right  to  call  into 
operation  more  causes  than  are  necessary  to  explain  the 
facts.  The  phenomena  which  the  enormous  apparatus  of 
heredity  is  invoked  to  explain,  can,  they  say,  be  explained 
without  it.  If  heredity  were  true,  then  what  would  be  the 
result?  If  acquired  characters  survived  and  were  transmitted, 
what  manner  of  beings  should  we  be?  The  most  marvellous 
thing  in  evolution  is  not  what  we  do  inherit,  but  what  we 
do  not,  the  fact  being  that  it  is  only  the  most  infinitesimal 
part  of  all  that  distinguished  the  parent  which  descends  to 
the  child  :  in  other  words,  the  thing  which  most  needs  to  be 
explained  is  net  the  possibility  of  acquired  characters  being 
transmitted,  but  the  certainty  that  the  major  part  of  them 
will  perish.  It  is  pathetic  and  significant  that  the  thing  the 


DIFFERENCE   MORE   THAN   IDENTITY         73 

child  most  needs  and  would  most  profit  by,  the  experience  of 
the  parent,  is  the  very  thing  it  does  not  receive,  but  lias  to 
gain  for  itself  in  the  bitter  way  common  to  all  its  ancestors. 

(iii.)  It  has  to  be  noted  that  throughout  the  whole  pro- 
cess we  apply  a  standard  of  judgment  that  involves  a  theory 
of  values.  For  what  permits  the  theory  of  evolution  to  be 
applied  to  man  and  society?  It  is  increased  differentiation. 
Now  in  this  case  to  what  are  we  to  affix  the  value?  To  the 
origin?  To  the  process  of  differentiation?  To  the  thing 
differentiated  ?  or  to  the  inheritance  ?  If,  for  example,  a  new 
organ  appears  differentiating  one  member  of  a  species  from 
all  the  others,  and  if  this  organ  becomes  the  parent  of  an 
entirely  new  species  of  organisms,  what  is  the  significant 
thing?  It  is  not  the  points  in  which  the  new  and  the 
old  species  agree,  but  the  points  in  which  they  differ.  To 
apply  this  to  the  case  in  hand :  if  we  have  to  measure  man's 
ethical  ideas  by  any  reasonable  standard,  it  should  be  not  by 
their  affinity  with  the  instincts  of  real  or  imaginary  creatures 
below  him  or  of  imagined  ancestors  behind  him  ;  but  rather 
by  the  qualities  which  distinguish  his  character  and  conduct 
from  theirs.  In  other  words,  it  is  the  point  of  distinction,  not 
of  similarity,  which  is  the  great  thing.  Love  of  offspring  is 
common  to  a  man  and  a  lion.  The  feeling  that  compels 
the  parent  to  seek  food  for  his  offspring  exists  in  both  ; 
but  in  the  man  the  obligation  to  maintain  his  offspring  is 
qualitatively  different  from  what  it  is  in  the  lion,  involving 
duties  educational,  social,  ethical,  which  belong  to  a  world 
higher  than  the  animal.  The  lion  is  not  bound  to  perish 
rather  than  not  find  food  ;  the  man  may  be  so  bound  :  the 
lion's  duties  are  bounded  by  his  den  ;  the  man's  by  human- 
ity. The  differentiation  in  this  case  is  the  important  point; 
and  as  here,  so  throughout.  And  this  means  that  the 
difference  in  what  the  man  creates  from  what  the  man  in- 
herits may  be  more  and  greater  than  all  his  inheritance.  It 
is  evident,  therefore,  that  man  docs  more  to  interpret  the 


74          SOCIETY   ADJUSTED  TO  THE   IDEAL 

process  that   is   behind  him  than  the    process  has  done  for 
the  interpretation  of  man. 

(iv.)  The  end  or  law  which  governs  the  process,  the  need 
of  adjusting  internal  to  external  relations,  of  adapting  organ- 
ism to  environment,  inverts  the  order  of  thought  and  nature. 
The  obligation  that  lies  on  moral  beings  is  not  to  adjust 
themselves  to  their  environment,  but  to  adjust  their  environ- 
ment to  the  higher  ideal  which  they  bring  to  it.  Harmony 
between  the  social  medium  and  the  social  unit  is  not  the 
ultimate  measure  of  conduct ;  to  argue  as  if  it  were  is  to  turn 
circumstances  into  the  master  as  well  as  the  maker  of  con- 
science. And  this  means  that  before  we  can  speak  of  this 
adjustment  as  good  we  have  to  adjust  the  society  or  the 
medium  to  an  idea  of  the  good  which  was  before  it  and  is 
distinct  from  it ;  i.e.  we  judge  both  the  environment  and  the 
organism,  because  we  apply  to  both  an  ideal  standard  which 
expresses  our  notion  of  what  both  ought  to  be.  This  ideal 
is  native  to  us,  lives  inseparably  in  us,  and  is  developed  from 
the  reason  we  are.  It  compels  us  to  seek  the  amelioration  of 
society  as  well  as  the  improvement  of  self,  and  so  aims  at  the 
adjustment  of  the  two  not  simply  to  each  other  but  to  a 
more  absolute  law.  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  thus  leaves  us 
with  an  end  which  neither  explains  the  beginning  nor  brings 
us  face  to  face  with  the  forces  that  have  carried  men  so  far 
towards  it.  The  mystery  of  the  moral  ideal  and  moral 
obligation  lies  in  man  rather  than  in  his  environment. 

§   IV.      What  do  Moral  Judgments  Involve  ? 

Let  us  now,  in  the  face  ol  these  discussions  and  distinc- 
tions, go  back  to  our  problem,  and  see  precisely  what  are 
the  points  that  need  to  be  explained.  Man  is  a  doer  of 
deeds  which  are  distinguished  by  their  ethical  qualities. 
They  can  be  tested  by  moral  standards  ;  they  are  subjects 
for  moral  judgment.  What  do  these  judgments  mean  ? 
What  is  their  source  and  basis  ?  Why  among  all  the  crea- 


MAN   AND   MORAL   JUDGMENTS  75 

tures  that  live  is  a  moral  standard  applied  to  man  alone  and 
everywhere  and  always  by  man  to  men  ?  The  questions  in- 
volved may  be  reduced  to  three.  First,  is  man  capable  of 
directing  his  own  conduct  ?  is  he  able  to  do  actions  which 
have  moral  qualities  ?  Secondly,  what  standard  have  we  to 
apply  in  order  to  the  differentiation  or  qualification  of  his 
actions  ?  Thirdly,  why  is  he  bound  to  do  acts  of  a  certain 
quality,  and  to  leave  undone  acts  of  other  and  different 
qualities?  In  other  words,  our  questions  concern  Freedom, 
Right,  and  Duty  :  whether  man  is  or  is  not  a  free  agent ; 
whether  he  has  or  has  not  faculties  or  standards  which 
qualify  him  to  use  his  freedom  ;  and  whether  he  has  or  has 
not  any  feeling  or  sense  of  obligation  as  to  their  use. 

I.  We  begin  with  the  question  as  to  his  power  ;  this  is 
fundamental.  Where  there  is  no  ability  there  can  be  no  obli- 
gation ;  what  lies  outside  a  man's  power  does  not  lie  within  a 
man's  duty.  Nay,  more,  without  this  freedom  or  ability  man 
becomes  a  mere  natural  being,  no  more  a  subject  of  moral 
judgment  than  the  brute.  It  is  by  virtue  of  his  power  to 
determine  his  own  choice  or  to  elect  his  own  lines  of  conduct 
that  he  is  to  be  praised  or  blamed  for  the  thing  he  does. 
Now  it  is  remarkable  and  characteristic  that  those  who  have 
made  ethics  the  creation  of  experience,  who  have  attempted 
to  resolve  them  into  the  acquired  instincts  of  the  organism 
that  has  had  to  struggle  for  life,  have  done  so  on  the  explicit 
or  implicit  ground  that  man  was  without  moral  freedom,  a 
creature  of  circumstances,  a  child  of  motive,  governed  by  his 
love  of  the  agreeable,  which  conserved  life,  or  his  dislike  of 
the  disagreeable,  which  threatened  it.  In  the  endeavour  to 
maintain  this  position,  a  distinction  has  been  drawn  between 
freedom  of  will  and  freedom  of  action.  Freedom  of  will  has 
been  denied  ;  freedom  of  action  has  been  affirmed  ;  but 
freedom  of  action  without  freedom  of  choice  is  only  a  form 
of  necessity.  It  means  the  capability  of  a  thing  to  be  moved, 
rather  than  the  ability  of  a  person  to  move  ;  it  belongs  rather 


76  FREEDOM   TO   OBEY   MOTIVES 

to  the  field  of  physics  than  of  ethics.  The  motive  is  a  cause 
which  exacts  its  equivalent  effect  in  the  choice.  Freedom  in 
this  sense  does  not  mean  that  man  has  the  power  of  initia- 
tion, but  only  that  he  has  the  capacity  of  responsive  movement, 
can  act  if  he  is  acted  on.  Now  we  must  here  distinguish  what 
is  necessary  as  an  occasion  for  choice  from  what  is  sufficient 
to  cause  it.  Freedom  has  been  denied  to  will  on  the  ground 
that  motives  are  necessary  to  choice  ;  but  while  motives  may 
be  necessary  they  need  not  necessitate.  Jonathan  Edwards, 
indeed,  argued  that  the  will  always  is  as  the  strongest  motive 
is  ;  but  he  did  that  on  the  express  ground  that  will  is 
the  same  as  desire,  inclination,  the  most  agreeable, — that 
motive  is,  in  short,  emotion.  But  it  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  the  argument  that  the  will  selects  motives,  motives  do 
not  select  the  will.  If  the  will  always  is  as  the  strongest 
motive  is,  then  man  has  no  choice  to  be  other  than  what  the 
motives  which  come  to  him  make  him.  The  responsibility 
for  himself  is  not  his,  it  belongs  to  the  motives  that  sur- 
round and  find  him.  If  so,  amelioration  of  character  must 
depend  upon  amelioration  of  circumstances.  Thus  as  the 
man  is  he  must  remain,  unless  he  be  re-made  by  the  maker 
of  his  motives,  or,  in  a  word,  his  environment.  For  only 
through  a  change  in  his  circumstances  can  any  change  come 
to  him  ;  and  so  the  way  to  effect  conversion  will  be  to  place 
the  bad  man  where  no  evil  motives  can  reach  him,  and  the 
good  man  where  only  bad  motives  can  find  him.  But  this 
way  is  an  impossible  way,  for  the  man  carries  his  motives 
within  him  ;  they  go  where  he  goes,  for  they  are  part  of  his 
very  self.  For,  as  Coleridge  said,  it  is  not  the  motive  that 
makes  the  man,  but  the  man  the  motive.  Granted  a  good 
man,  a  bad  motive  cannot  sway  him  ;  granted  a  bad  man,  a 
good  motive  will  not  find  him.  Thus  it  is  not  true  that  the 
will  always  is  as  the  strongest  motive  is,  but  it  is  true  that 
the  motive  is  as  is  the  man,  and  what  the  man  is  is  more  a 
matter  of  will  than  of  circumstances. 


THE  FREEDOM  OF  BURIDAN'S  ASS  77 

The  bondage  of  the  will  were  indeed  fatal  to  the  judgment 
that  holds  man  responsible  for  his  acts,  and  approves  or  dis- 
approves according  to  their  special  quality.  If  motives  de- 
termine action,  the  fable  of  Buridan's  Ass  ceases  to  be 
fabulous.  It  is  possible  to  conceive  alternatives  where  the 
motives  are  so  equally  balanced  that  the  will  would  be  com- 
pelled to  remain  in  a  state  of  complete  equilibrium,  incap- 
able of  inclining  either  to  the  right  hand  or  to  the  left.  But 
while  will  is  not  necessitated  by  motives,  motives  are  neces- 
sary to  choice  ;  for  it  is  the  very  essence  of  rational  freedom 
to  demand  a  reason  why  it  should  act.  If  there  were  no 
reason,  choice  could  not  be  rational ;  it  would  be  an  accident 
or  a  chance.  But  there  is  nothing  so  little  arbitrary  as  a 
rational  will  ;  where  it  is  not  the  arbitrary  must  be  ;  for  the 
free  will  acts  in  view  of  reasons,  and  would  not  be  rational  if 
it  could  choose  without  them. 

Still  the  reality  of  freedom  lies  deeper  than  argument. 
Nature  witnesses  to  it  ;  man  blames  himself  when  he  does 
wrong  because  he  believes  himself  to  have  voluntarily  chosen 
the  worse  when  he  could  have  taken  the  better.  Law  judges 
a  man  most  severely  when  it  holds  him  to  have  freely  com- 
mitted the  crime  with  which  he  is  charged.  Responsibility  is 
not  a  vicarious  thing,  where  a  necessitated  victim  bears  the 
blame  of  ancestral  or  social  sins  ;  but  it  means  that  man  is  to 
be  judged  for  a  thing  or  act  he  himself  willed  to  do.  He  is 
tried  alike  by  God  and  man  upon  the  principle  which  each 
individual  conscience  authenticates — that  he  whose  action  is 
in  question  did  it  when  he  could  have  done  otherwise  ;  and 
he  was  then  bound  to  do  as  he  could  have  done. 

But  while  freedom  is  a  sine  qua  no  a  of  moral  action  and 
implied  in  all  moral  judgments,  it  has  here  a  further  signifi- 
cance : — it  qualifies  the  argument  from  the  transmitted  ex- 
periences of  the  past.  For  what  a  man  inherits  leaves  him 
still  a  free  man  ;  the  judgment  he  has  to  bear  is  for  his  own 
act,  and  not  for  the  acts  of  his  ancestry,  even  though  they 


78       HAPPINESS   AND   THE   IDEA   OF   RIGHT 

may  have  created  in  him  tendencies  which  are  not  easily 
resisted.  These  tendencies  do  not  cancel  freedom,  only  con- 
dition it ;  they  define  the  limits  of  responsibility,  but  while 
they  may  qualify  they  do  not  annul  it,  for  its  ground  stands 
unbroken.  But  in  doing  this  his  freedom  does  much  more  ; 
it  lifts  man  above  the  chain  of  physical  causation,  and  makes 
him  the  symbol  of  a  being  higher  than  the  forces  that  are 
governed  by  mechanical  necessity.  For  since  he  is  free  he 
stands  in  conduct  in  the  same  transcendental  relation  to  the 
forces  and  laws  of  Nature  as  he  does  in  knowledge  to  her 
qualities  and  objects.  His  freedom  is  the  correlate  of  his 
thought ;  and  as  the  man  who  knows  phenomena  is  not  one 
of  the  phenomena  he  knows,  so  the  will  that  can  initiate 
action  is  not  a  mere  event  or  link  in  a  series  of  antecedents 
and  sequents,  where  each  follows  the  other  either  without 
perceived  connection  or  in  a  rigorous  order  of  physical  causa- 
tion. Thought  is  transcendence  as  regards  the  phenomena 
of  space,  Will  is  transcendence  as  regards  the  events  of  time  ; 
the  double  transcendence  involves  the  complete  supernatural 
character  of  man. 

2.  But  we  come  next  to  the  idea  of  the  right.  What  is  it 
and  whence  is  it  ?  We  have  seen  that  those  who  would  give 
a  strictly  naturalistic  account  of  ethics  have  attempted  to  ex- 
plain the  right  as  the  agreeable,  or,  to  use  the  very  precise  and 
definite  language  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  "Actions  are  right  in 
proportion  as  they  tend  to  promote  happiness,  wrong  as  they 
tend  to  produce  the  reverse  of  happiness.  By  happiness  is 
intended  pleasure  and  the  absence  of  pain  ;  by  unhappiness 
pain  and  the  privation  of  pleasure."  1  A  sentence  like  this  is 
quite  without  significance  until  the  terms  "  pleasure "  and 
"happiness"  be  defined,  and  until  we  have  determined 
whether  pleasure  or  happiness  be  one  and  uniform,  or  varied 
in  kind  and  quality.  There  are  really  three  questions  which 

1  Mill,  "  Utilitarianism,"  Ethics,  p.  91  (Douglas'  ed.). 


HAPPINESS   AND   ITS   SORTS  79 

such  a  sentenqe  directly  suggests  :  what  is  happiness  ?  what 
sort  of  happiness  ?  whose  happiness  ? 

(a)  What  is  happiness?  It  is  an  infinite  thing,  so  infinite 
that  no  man  can  tell  its  forms,  enumerate  or  measure  its 
varieties.  There  is  happiness  which  is  mere  sensual  indul- 
gence, and  happiness  which  is  intellectual  enjoyment.  There 
is  the  happiness  of  the  savage,  who  lies  and  suns  himself, 
gorged,  on  the  bank  ;  of  the  serious  student,  who  lives  in  the 
study  and  among  his  books  ;  of  the  speculator,  who  gambles 
in  stocks  and  shares  ;  of  the  strenuous  athlete,  who  feels  as 
if  his  soul  were  in  his  muscles  or  his  limbs  ;  of  the  noirccau 
ricJie,  who  feels  as  if  recognition  by  Society  were  admission 
into  heaven.  Unless  we  define  happiness,  how  can  we  speak 
of  it  ?  And  if  we  qualify  it,  we  introduce  distinctions  not 
contained  within  the  idea  itself,  but  drawn  from  another  and 
higher  sphere.  For  Happiness,  unqualified,  is  the  most 
absolutely  insignificant  term  in  the  whole  vocabulary  of  philo- 
sophy or  of  literature  ;  and  it  is  therefore  signally  unsuitable 
when  made  to  play  the  part  of  ultimate  arbiter  as  regards 
the  qualities  which  make  actions  right  or  wrong. 

(/3  What  sort  of  happiness?  Is  it  sensuous?  Is  it  in- 
tellectual? Is  it  ethical  or  social?  Is  it  "comfort"  which 
seems  to  so  many  Englishmen  the  only  real  paradise  ? 
As  we  have  seen  that  quality  is  a  needful  element  in  the 
definition  of  Happiness,  we  find  it  to  be  also  needful  in 
the  differentiation  and  appraisement  of  its  kinds.  For  the 
sorts  of  happiness  are  innumerable,  just  as  the  persons  who 
may  be  happy  or  miserable  represent  not  only  in  number 
but  in  grade  all  degrees  of  capacity.  Is  then  happiness  a 
thing  we  can  quantify  as  well  as  qualify?  If  we  use  it 
as  an  ethical  measure  or  standard,  must  we  not  in  our 
reasoning  add  mass  to  quality?  Is  the  greatest  quantity 
of  a  lower  quality  of  happiness  to  be  preferred  to  a  smaller 
quantity  of  a  higher  quality,  or,  on  the  contrary,  is  quality 
to  be  preferred  to  quantity  ?  Then  what  or  who  is  to 


8o      WHOSE   HAPPINESS   TO   BE   PROMOTED? 

determine  the  sort  of  happiness  to  which  superior  and 
determinative  excellence  belongs  ?  Is  it  the  man  ?  Is  it  the 
fashion  of  the  passing  society  ?  or  is  it  some  standard  apart 
from  both,  and  more  permanent  and  universal  than  either? 
In  other  words,  it  is  impossible  to  begin  to  distinguish 
between  sorts  of  happiness  without  introducing  a  standard 
by  which  happiness  can  be  measured.  But  where  a  standard 
is  introduced,  it  is  distinguished  from  what  it  measures,  and 
is  held  to  be  higher  than  it ;  and  so  happiness,  as  some- 
thing which  is  itself  determined,  cannot  be  determinative 
of  the  quality  of  the  action  whose  character  it  was  thought 
to  decide. 

(7)  But  suppose  we  have  found  and  agreed  upon  some 
method  of  differentiating  or  testing  the  quality  of  pleasures, 
we  are  at  once  met  by  the  question,  Whose  is  the  happiness 
that  I  am  to  promote?  My  own?  My  family's?  My  coun- 
try's ?  My  kind's  ?  If  these  be  inconsistent,  who  is  to  decide 
between  them  ?  If  I  am  to  promote  my  family's  happiness,  it 
may  be  at  the  sacrifice  of  my  own.  If  I  am  to  promote  my 
country's  happiness,  it  may  be  at  the  expense  of  my  family's. 
If  I  am  to  promote  the  happiness  of  my  kind,  it  may  be  by 
turning  against  my  own  country,  and  playing  what  would  be 
by  many  described  as  a  treacherous  or  an  unpatriotic  part. 
How  are  these  things  to  be  determined,  or  the  particular 
persons  whose  happiness  I  am  to  promote  to  be  found  out  ? 
But  further,  if  I  give  up  my  personal  pleasure  to  promote 
that  of  any  of  those  just  named,  what  guarantee  have  I  that 
theirs  will  be  promoted,  or  that  in  doing  so  I  am  not  reduc- 
ing by  the  sacrifice  of  my  own  or  my  family's  or  my  coun- 
try's the  sum  total  of  happiness  in  the  universe  ?  If  I  so 
serve  this  generation  as  to  increase  its  pleasure,  may  I  not 
be  doing  it  at  the  expense,  say,  of  my  own  health,  or  the 
health  of  generations  that  are  to  come  after  me,  especially 
those  that  may  spring  from  my  own  loins  ?  And  the  matter 
may  become  very  urgent,  for  the  question,  Whose  plea- 


WHENCE   THE   SENSE   OF   OBLIGATION?       Si 

sure  ?  blends  also  with  this  other,  What  sort  of  pleasure  ? 
Is  it  the  Queen's  in  the  palace?  Is  it  the  peasant's  in  the 
hut  ?  Is  it  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  capitalist  or  of  the 
workman?  Nay,  is  it  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number?  But  who  is  to  estimate  the  number?  Who  is  to 
tell  the  happiness?  Is  the  greatest  number  to  tell  me  what 
it  is,  or  am  I  to  tell  the  greatest  number  what  its  happiness 
is  or  ought  to  be  ?  And  how  am  I  to  find  out  the  acts  that 
will  either  fulfil  my  notions  of  what  the  greatest  happiness  of 
the  greatest  number  is  or  ought  to  be,  or  what  they  conceive 
their  own  happiness  most  distinctively  to  consist  in  ? 

It  seems  then  as  if  pleasure  were  a  completely  imprac- 
ticable standard  of  the  right,  and  as  if  we  must  find 
one  more  capable  of  application  to  all  the  varieties  of 
human  action  and  conduct,  or  abandon  in  despair  the  effort 
to  discover  what  is  right  or  good. 

3.  But  there  is  not  only  the  power  to  do  the  right  and 
the  right  to  be  done,  there  is  the  obligation  to  do  it.  The 
word  Duty,  or,  put  into  its  concrete  form,  Conscience — how 
do  we  come  into  the  possession  of  this  ?  Whence  the  feel- 
ing of  obligation,  the  idea  represented  by  that  imperious 
word  "ought"?  Suppose  that  the  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number  is  the  standard  of  right,  the  question  remains,  Why 
am  I  bound  to  promote  it  ?  We  may  be  told  that  the  sense 
of  obligation  is,  as  it  were,  the  social  sanction  worked  into 
our  consciousness  and  woven  into  feeling  ;  the  authority  of 
society  translated  into  a  personal  judgment.  Suppose  this 
were  so,  how  or  by  what  process  is  the  social  sanction  got 
into  the  man  ?  The  process  of  incorporation  ma}'  be  repre- 
sented in  some  such  form  as  this  :  the  social  sanction,  it  may 
be  said,  is  implanted  in  us  because  society  educates  us  ;  and 
having  found  out  what  was  most  for  its  own  good,  it  instils 
into  us  by  law  and  education,  by  convention  and  custom,  its 
idea  of  what  acts  are  suitable  or  appropriate  to  its  needs 
or  conducive  to  its  well-being.  This  process  of  instillation  is 

P.C.R.  6 


82  CONSCIENCE   AND   SOCIETY 

so  subtle  and  so  completely  carried  out  that  the  man  cannot 
separate  the  judgment  of  society  within  him  from  himself. 
It  has  been  made  a  part  and  parcel  of  his  own  being,  and  so 
he  judges  himself  just  as  if  he  were  collective  society 
personalized. 

Well,  now,  suppose  we  grant  this,  and  grant  also  another 
thing,  that  society  has  by  an  extraordinary  exercise  of 
arithmetical  genius  so  worked  out  the  terms  of  the  ethical 
calculus  that  it  can  tell  which  among  all  possible  acts  most 
makes  for  its  happiness,  and  which  acts  most  make  for  its 
misery,  what  then  ?  Is  the  phenomenon  of  duty,  are  the 
phenomena  of  conscience,  explained  ?  On  the  contrary, 
wherein  consists  their  permanent  and  pre-eminent  peculiarity? 
In  this,  that  man  feels,  when  most  bound  by  conscience,  most 
independent  of  society, — bound  to  do  the  thing  which  duty 
imperiously  commands,  even  though  society  may  imperiously 
forbid.  If  the  man  be  a  religious  man  and  the  society  also 
in  earnest  about  its  own  view  of  religion  and  against  his,  his 
defiance  of  its  judgment  and  its  sanctions  may  involve  his 
going  to  the  stake.  And  how  does  his  conscience  show  its 
quality?  In  compelling  him  to  go  to  the  stake  rather  than 
submit  to  society.  If  he  is  a  statesman,  and  society  pre- 
scribes a  policy  which  he  disapproves,  what  is  he  bound  to 
do  ?  Accept  the  authority  of  his  own  conscience  or  of 
society  ?  Would  he  gain  or  lose  respect  by  publicly  profess- 
ing to  regard  the  voice  of  the  State,  in  opposition  to  his 
own  moral  judgment,  as  the  voice  of  God  ?  Is  not  the  dis- 
tinctive peculiarity  of  conscience  this  : — that  if  it  commands 
a  policy  or  mode  of  conduct  or  expression  of  opinion  that 
may  make  a  man  a  social  outcast  and  bring  upon  him  in 
their  severest  form  all  the  penalties  which  the  social  sanction 
may  be  able  to  enforce,  yet  there  is  expected  from  him,  all 
the  more  rather  than  the  less,  full  and  unqualified  obedience 
to  its  behests  ? 

But   though    this    is    a    point   which   we   may    leave  as  a 


MAN  AND  THE   SOCIAL   SANCTION  83 

problem  to  the  hedonist,  let  us  proceed  a  little  further, 
and  suppose  'that  the  man  has  been  got  to  occupy  the 
standpoint  of  society,  to  look  at  himself  through  its  eyes 
rather  than  his  own,  and  that  society  has  succeeded  in  in- 
corporating its  judgment  in  the  feeling  which  he  calls  his 
conscience,  how  is  that  judgment  to  become  to  him  a  law? 
How  is  that  to  be  translated  into  a  categorical  imperative? 
Fear  of  the  social  sanction  cannot  do  it,  for  we  have  just 
seen  how  easily  and  how  often  in  the  highest  and  most 
imperious  cases  that  sanction  may  be  defied.  And  may  not 
a  man  of  lower  quality  than  the  martyr  or  the  sufferer  for 
conscience'  sake  reasonably  argue  thus? — "Society  is  an 
immense  and  continuous  organism,  while  I  am  a  humble 
and  ephemeral  unit.  My  happiness  is  a  far  greater  thing 
to  me  than  society's  can  ever  be  to  it,  for  it  is  impossible 
that  the  whole  of  society  can  by  a  single  act  be  made 
miserable  as  I  may  be,  not  only  for  this  m  >mcnt  but  for  all 
the  moments  that  are  to  come  of  my  ephemeral  being.  How 
then  is  it  possible  for  me  to  contribute  better  to  the  sum 
total  of  happiness  than  by  increasing  the  amount  of  my 
own  ? "  And  would  not  that  man's  argument,  whether  re- 
garded from  the  standpoint  of  the  most  enlightened  self- 
interest  or  from  that  of  social  interest,  be  valid  and  invin- 
cible ?  And  so  we  are  left  by  this  philosophy  as  completely 
without  an  authority  to  enforce  duty  as  without  a  good  to 
be  realized  or  any  ability  to  realize  it. 

§  V.      The  Ethical  Man  means  an  Ethical  Universe : 
Biitler  and  Kant 

I.  If  now  Freedom,  Right,  and  Duty  cannot  be  construed 
as  creations  of  experience,  whether  individual  or  collective,  it 
follows  that  they  either  represent  or  are  integral  elements 
of  human  nature,  involved  in  its  very  idea  and  evolved 
in  its  evolution.  But  that  which  is  integral  to  man  is 


84  THE   ETHICAL  MAN 

no  less  integral  to  his  universe.  What  is  in  him  is  not 
independent  of  what  is  without  him,  but  repeats  and  reflects 
it,  lives  in  him  in  active  intercourse  with  what  is  above  and 
around  him,  just  as  his  organism  lives  within  and  through  its 
environment,  absorbing  into  itself  the  elements  without  that 
are  needful  to  growth  and  health  within.  The  same  law 
holds  in  the  ethical  as  in  the  physical  region,  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  also  in  the  intellectual.  As  the  intellect  implies  the  in- 
telligible medium  in  which  it  lives,  so  we  can  conceive  a  personal 
conscience  only  where  it  can  express  a  universal  law,  and 
moral  freedom  only  where  there  is  a  supreme  ethical  Will  to 
govern.  Without  this  correspondence  of  man's  nature  with 
the  constitution  of  the  universe  in  which  he  lives  moral  life 
would  not  be  possible  to  him,  nor  would  obedience  bring  the 
harmony  between  personal  will  and  imperative  law  which  is 
the  very  notion  of  beatitude. 

Two  great  ethical  thinkers — Butler  and  Kant — may  be 
taken  as  exponents  of  certain  deductions  which  follow  from 
the  ethical  position  here  maintained.  They  are  instruct- 
ive alike  in  their  agreements  and  in  their  differences.  They 
agree,  first,  that  there  is  a  law  ultimate  and  absolute  in- 
corporated in  the  nature  of  man  :  ultimate,  because  it  neither 
asks  nor  gives  a  reason  for  its  dictates,  but  simply  commands  ; 
absolute,  for  while  it  speaks  in  the  individual  its  tone  is  that 
of  the  universal,  of  a  sovereign  endowed  with  perfect  right 
and  manifest  authority.  They  agree,  secondly,  that  this  law 
is  immediate ;  nothing  comes  between  it  and  the  man  ;  it 
speaks  with  him  face  to  face,  enforces  duty  and  allows  no 
intermediary  to  qualify  or  repeal  its  authority.  Thirdly,  it  is 
so  intrinsic  and  essential  in  its  character  that  without  it  the 
person  is  not  a  man,  through  it  he  becomes  human  ;  by 
obedience  he  achieves  humanity. 

Both  of  these  eminent  thinkers,  then,  saw  that  the  con- 
ception of  the  intrinsic  and  essential  morality  of  man 
involved  similar  elements  in  the  universe  ;  but  each  works 


IN   AN   ETHICAL   UNIVERSE  85 

out  the  principle  with  characteristic  differences.  Kant  is  the 
more  formal  and  scholastic  in  method,  Butler  the  more 
cautious  and  suggestive  in  statement.  Kant  combines  with 
his  critical  doubts  as  to  the  competence  of  the  pure  reason 
in  the  region  of  transcendental  dialectic,  a  rigorous  dogmatism 
in  the  conclusions  of  his  ethical  logic  ;  but  Butler  so  feels  the 
range  and  reality  of  our  ignorance  that  he  insinuates  rather 
than  draws  his  more  certain  or  assured  inferences.  Kant's 
interests  are  intellectual,  and  even  where  he  is  most  the 
moralist  he  does  not  cease  to  be  the  philosopher  ;  but  Butler's 
main  concern  is  religion  ;  and  when  he  is  most  the  philosopher, 
he  still  remains  the  divine.  Kant's  philosophy  is  critical 
because  he  feels  at  every  moment  its  antithesis  to  the  old 
dogmatic  rationalism  ;  Butler's  theology  is  apologetical,  for 
he  never  forgets  the  deism  which  is  the  fashionable  belief  of 
his  day,  or  the  men  who  have  found  their  way  through  a 
relaxed  faith  into  laxity  of  morals.  These  differences  of 
method  and  mental  attitude  are  reflected  in  their  respective 
arguments. 

2.  Butler's  argument  exists  in  two  forms,  a  positive  or 
didactic,  and  an  apologetical  or  polemical.  We  find  the 
former  in  the  Sermons,  the  latter  in  the  Analogy.  In  the 
Sermons  his  philosophy  is  a  Christian  Stoicism.  Men  ought 
to  live  according  to  Nature,  which  is  not  acting  as  we  please, 
but  doing  as  we  ought,  obeying  our  legitimate  sovereign,  the 
Conscience,  making  it  the  whole  business  of  our  lives,  as  it 
is  absolutely  the  whole  business  of  a  moral  agent,  to  con- 
form ourselves  to  it.  "  This  is  what  the  ancient  precept 
means,  Rt'i'cn'iicc  tliysclf.  It  is  the  essence  of  a  system  to 
be  an  one  or  a  whole  made  up  of  several  parts,"  but  the 
parts  can  be  a  whole  only  as  they  form  an  one.  A  watch 
is  a  whole  composed  of  man}'  parts,  yet  made  a  unity  for 
the  measuring  of  time  by  the  all-pervading  and  controlling 
mainspring  ;  and  men  and  societies  are  multitudes  which 
are  reduced  to  system,  or  units  made  into  unit}'  by  the  com- 


86  MORAL  LAW   IN   THE   INDIVIDUAL 

mon  yet  individuated  empire  of  the  conscience  which  regu- 
lates life  and  defines  its  end.  And  they  have  been  so 
constituted  by  the  Creator,  for  Butler  conceives  that  "follow- 
ing Nature  "  and  "  obeying  the  voice  of  God  "  are  not  two 
things,  but  one  and  the  same.  In  the  Analogy  these  ideas 
are  elaborated  into  a  defence  of  those  religious  truths  which 
teach  belief  in  a  future  life,  the  providence  and  government 
of  God  here  and  hereafter,  the  life  that  now  is  as  a  scene 
and  period  of  probation,  and  the  need  of  a  revelation  to 
make  this  life  what  it  ought  to  be  in  view  of  the  life  to 
come.  We  may  therefore  represent  the  argument  as  having 
unfolded  itself  before  the  mind  of  the  English  divine  in 
terms  somewhat  like  these  :  "  The  law  which  is  everywhere 
incorporated  in  man  implies  a  Lawgiver.  While  it  lives  and 
speaks  in  the  individual,  it  is  yet  distributed  through  the 
whole  ;  and  this  universality  is  only  the  more  distinctly  ex- 
pressed in  the  severe  individualism  under  which  it  is  realized. 
For  it  signifies  that  the  law  is  so  essential  to  human  nature 
that  it  must  be  incorporated  in  the  unit  in  order  that  it  may 
be  the  more  completely  and  universally  evolved  from  him  into 
the  unity ;  but  it  could  not  be  complete  and  universal  were 
it  simply  incorporated  in  the  whole  in  order  that  it  might  be 
impressed  from  without  upon  the  unit.  The  order  that  is 
made  by  external  pressure  may  be  mechanical,  but  is  not 
organic  ;  it  may  be  political,  but  it  is  not  moral.  The  highest 
order  springs  from  the  harmony  of  all  the  units,  which 
means  that  the  outward  and  inward  so  correspond  that  the 
individual  can  be  worked  into  a  system  that  completely 
satisfies  every  personal  and  realizes  every  collective  end. 
The  essential  unity  of  a  State  is  not  secured  by  the  sove- 
reign, but  by  those  remarkable  unities  incorporated  in  each 
individual  that  we  term  blood,  descent,  language,  tradition, 
belief.  It  is  an  ideal  thing  which  custom  may  express,  but 
legislation  cannot  create.  The  alphabet  is  in  every  educated 
man  ;  it  lies  at  the  root  of  his  knowledge  of  his  own  tongue. 


ARTICULATED   INTO   A   MORAL    SOCIETY      87 

His  knowledge  of  that  tongue  lies  at  the  root  of  his  enjoyment 
of  its  literature,  his  appreciation  of  its  poetry,  its  history  and 
its  science.  Without  that  knowledge  its  literature  would 
speak  to  him  in  vain.  Similarly,  the  moral  law  of  the  universe 
is  impersonated  in  its  moral  units.  It  is  over  all  men  because 
it  is  in  all.  There  has  therefore  been  a  common  Lawgiver  ; 
and  this  Lawgiver  must  have  also  been  Creator,  for  He  who 
made  man  made  also  the  law  in  and  with  the  man  ;  and  He 
who  made  both  law  and  man  administers  the  law  by  judging 
the  man.  He  is  therefore  sovereign ;  the  system  we  live 
under  He  instituted,  and  the  life  we  live  under  it  is  one  of 
probation,  lived  that  we  may  give  in  an  account  to  Him  who 
rules  His  universe  by  enforcing  His  laws." 

3.  Kant's  argument  differed  considerably  from  Butler's 
especially  as  it  made  Deity  one  of  several  deductions  from  the 
moral  law — the  highest  in  a  trinity  of  consequences  from  its 
supremacy.  The  stress  he  laid  upon  duty  in  his  Practical 
Philosophy  was  a  sort  of  compensation  for  the  argumentative 
impotence  of  his  Speculative.  The  intensity  of  Kant's  moral 
convictions,  the  severity  of  his  doctrine,  the  force  with 
which  he  preached  duty  to  an  age  that  did  not  love  it, 
entitles  him  to  something  more  than  the  regard  we  give  to 
the  father  of  that  critical  and  transcendental  philosophy  which 
has  done  more  to  educate  and  uplift  Mind  than  any  purely 
speculative  school  the  world  has  known  since  the  days  of 
Plato.  Kant  starts  from  the  position  that  the  only  tiling 
good  without  qualification  is  the  good  will  ;  and  that  will  is 
good  which  acts  from  duty  and  not  simply  from  inclination, 
duty  being  respect  for  law  and  obedience  to  it.  This  law  as 
moral  is  absolute  in  its  authority.  It  is  a  categorical  impera- 
tive expressed  in  an  unconditioned  "thou  shalt."  The  cate- 
gorical is  distinguished  from  the  hypothetical  imperative  in 
not  being  consequential,  or  something  dependent  on  a  prior 
principle  or  condition.  It  simply  speaks  the  thing  that  man 
is  bound  to  do,  every  individual  act  being  the  expression  of 
a  universal  principle  or  duty. 


88  FREEDOM,   IMMORTALITY,   GOD 

From  this  absolute  categorical  imperative  three  things 
followed  : — (a)  freedom  ;  where  the  obligation  is  absolute  the 
power  possessed  must  be  equal  to  its  performance.  The 
being  it  commands  could  not,  in  respect  of  what  is  com- 
manded, be  under  the  control  of  any  merely  natural  or  ex- 
ternal force.  Only  where  "  thou  canst "  may  be  said  is  "  thou 
oughtest"  possible.  But  though  the  will  be  free  it  is  not 
blind  ;  its  choices  are  not  arbitrary.  Hence  every  moral  act 
must  have  an  end — the  highest  good.  This  good  consists  of 
two  elements — virtue  and  felicity  or  happiness.  If  either  be 
absent,  the  good  is  not  realized.  But  the  two  are  inseparable  ; 
virtue  is  a  necessary  condition  of  felicity,  felicity  the  natural 
crown  of  virtue. 

But  now  (/3)  this  cannot  be  realized  within  the  terms  and 
under  the  limitations  of  our  empirical  existence.  Hence  im- 
mortality follows  as  the  second  deduction  from  the  ethical 
postulate.  The  moral  law  demands  perfect  virtue  or  holiness  ; 
but  a  mortal  being  cannot  realize  moral  perfection  or  a  holy 
completeness  of  nature  and  conduct  within  the  bounds  of  his 
mortal  life.  If,  then,  there  is  to  be  virtue,  there  must  be 
immortal  existence.  The  law  that  demands  perfect  virtue 
guarantees  immortality  as  a  condition  for  its  realization. 

But  (7)  to  freedom  and  immortality  God  must  be  added. 
For  if  there  is  to  be  happiness,  the  felicity  that  crowns  virtue 
and  turns  it  into  the  supreme  good,  there  must  be  con- 
ditions favourable  to  its  being.  But  these  conditions  can 
be  realized  only  where  nature  and  will  work  together  in 
harmony  ;  i.e.  while  the  moral  law  is  independent  of  nature, 
nature  in  all  its  conditions  must  serve  the  moral  law  if  felicity 
is  to  be  complete.  But  this  service  man  is  unable  to  compel ; 
the  only  being  able  to  compel  it  is  Deity ;  for  He  alone  is 
Master  of  Nature.  He  then  is  as  necessary  as  freedom  and 
immortality  to  man's  highest  good.  These,  then,  are  the 
necessary  postulates  of  the  practical  reason,  the  logical  impli- 
cates of  the  categorical  imperative  :  Freedom,  Immortality, 


AND   THE   CATEGORICAL   IMPERATIVE        89 

God.  They  may  be  no  objects  of  speculative  knowledge,  but 
they  are  objects  of  the  rational  faith,  whose  being  is  grounded 
in  the  categorical  imperative  and  guaranteed  by  it.  And  the 
faith  they  warrant  is  that  the  ethical  man  lives  in  an  ethical 
universe  ;  the  moral  nature  which  is  essential  to  man  moral- 
izes his  universe. 

§  VI.     Deductions  and  Conclusion 

The  difference  between  the  two  arguments  is  perhaps  more 
formal  than  substantial,  a  matter  of  formal  logic  rather  than 
metaphysical  principle.  Butler  does  not  emphasize  freedom 
as  strongly  as  Kant,  but  he  holds  it  as  firmly,  while  he  con- 
ceives immortality  and  God  to  be  necessary  to  probation 
here  and  beatitude  hereafter  ;  and,  therefore,  to  be  clear  and 
indubitable  implicates  of  his  moral  interpretation  of  Nature. 
And  with  Kant  the  subordination  or  argumentative  depend- 
ence of  Deity  upon  the  categorical  imperative  is  more  logical 
than  real.  The  system  as  a  whole  hangs  together.  Subjec- 
tively, the  ultimate,  the  thing  of  which  we  are  supremely 
conscious  if  we  are  conscious  of  ourselves  at  all,  is  the 
sovereignty  of  conscience  ;  but  objectively,  the  reality  which 
is  the  correlate  of  our  ultimate  consciousness,  is  a  universe  in 
which  God  is  Sovereign.  We  may  then  deduce  from  this 
ethical  dialectic  principles  that  ought  to  carry  us  to  conclu- 
sions of  the  first  importance  for  our  present  discussion. 

I.  Man  as  moral,  and  therefore  free,  stands  above  nature, 
even  while  he  seems  within  it.  The  will  involves  another 
order  of  transcendence  than  belongs  to  the  intellect ;  for  it  is 
a  much  higher  and  more  complex  transcendence  to  stand  in 
act  and  character  above  the  order  or  succession  of  mechanical 
sequences  than  in  the  act  of  cognition  to  unify  phenomena. 
Man,  in  short,  is  no  mere  physical  or  natural  effect ;  he  is  a 
moral  cause.  As  a  moral  cause  he  possesses  the  power  of 
initiative.  He  is  not  simply  made  by  the  past  ;  he  is  the 


90  MORAL   WILL   CREATIVE 

present,  and  he  helps  to  make  the  future.  The  increase  of 
moral  good  in  the  world  is  as  possible  as  the  increase  of 
energy  is  impossible,  and  moral  good  is  the  direct  creation  of 
moral  will.  Physical  forces,  so  far  as  they  are  conceived  as 
causes,  pass  into  their  effects  ;  the  change  produced  is  the 
exact  equivalent  of  the  energy  expended.  But  there  is  no 
such  exact  equivalence  between  moral  causes  and  their 
effects.  The  will  is  a  permanent  force,  not  exhausted  by  a 
single  choice  or  any  number  of  choices,  but  ever  creative,, 
ever  re-creative,  making  conditions  which  not  only  allow, 
but  promote  and  demand  the  existence  of  higher  things. 
The  correlative  of  the  indestructibility  of  matter  is,  if  we 
may  so  phrase  it,  its  increatability  ;  it  can  be  as  little  made 
as  destroyed,  but  remains  a  stable  quantity,  though  with 
infinite  instability  as  to  mode.  But  these  terms  cannot  be 
used  of  either  good  will  or  moral  good.  There  may  be 
an  indefinite  multiplication  of  good  wills,  and  in  moral 
good  an  infinite  upward  progression.  In  this  region  every 
person  of  higher  excellence  than  the  society  into  which  he 
is  born,  every  nobler  ideal  realized,  every  new  virtue  or  finer 
type  of  old  virtues  achieved,  every  grace  added  to  humanity, — 
is  an  increase  of  the  good  stored  in  the  world  and  the  direct 
outcome  of  the  moral  will.  This  will  stands,  therefore,  as  an 
initiative  force,  a  centre  of  creative  action,  able  not  only  to 
effect  or  suffer  changes,  but  even  to  augment  in  quantity  and 
improve  in  quality  what  it  found  in  existence. 

2.  Man  further  transcends  nature  by  carrying  within  him- 
self the  law  he  is  bound  to  obey.  The  code  of  ethics  which 
he  makes  for  himself  out  of  himself  differentiates  him  from 
every  merely  natural  being ;  and  it  signifies  that  it  is  by 
transcending  nature  that  he  becomes  himself.  He  progresses 
by  self-realization.  This  self  is  not  empirical,  does  not  grow 
out  of  experience,  but  is  transcendental,  makes  experience  ; 
and  is  never  satisfied  with  the  experience  gained,  but  ever 
strives  after  the  unrealized.  Hence  there  is  something  uni- 


POSSIBLE   INCREASE   OF  GOOD  91 

versal  in  the  Ego  ;  it  is  never  a  mere  enclosed  or  shut-in 
individual,  but  a  person  of  one  substance  not  only  with  the 
race  of  man,  but  with  the  whole  of  reason  everywhere. 
Hence  man,  within  the  physical  conditions  that  limit  him 
and  seem  to  reduce  him  to  the  hue  and  mode  of  his  environ- 
ment, creates  conditions — intellectual,  ethical,  social — which 
contend  against  those  imposed  upon  him  by  nature.  Over 
against  its  pitiless  struggle  for  life  he  creates  a  passion  for 
well-doing,  the  mercy  whose  quality  is  not  strained,  the  "  truth 
that  worketh  by  love,"  "  the  hope  that  maketh  not  ashamed," 
"the  love  that  rejoiceth  not  in  iniquity,  but  rejoiceth  in  the 
truth."  And  the  qualities  that  do  most  to  perfect  his  person- 
ality contribute  most  to  the  creation  of  the  higher  ethical 
conditions  ;  so  much  so  that  the  degree  in  which  he  trans- 
cends nature  tends  to  humanize  even  her  most  brutal  forces. 

3.  Since  man  as  active  will  and  immanent  law  trans- 
cends nature,  he  cannot  be  measured  by  it.  Generalizations 
based  upon  the  study  of  nature  ought  not  to  be  used  to 
determine  what  is  or  is  not  possible  to  him.  The  laws  under 
which  phenomena  may  be  grouped  do  not  apply  to  persons 
who  are  more  than  phenomenal,  who  are  the  noumena  through 
which  all  phenomena  are.  The  natural  law  of  the  Roman 
urist  was  not  an  actual  thing,  nor  was  the  perfect  man  of  the 
Roman  Stoic  an  actual  person.  They  were  ideals,  but  they 
were  not  unreal  because  they  were  not  actual  ;  rather  they 
were  all  the  more  real  that  they  were  so  ideal.  Natural  Law 
meant  the  abstract  justice  and  right,  the  ideal  equity  of  the 
human  reason,  which  could  be  so  applied  to  the  concrete  and 
positive  Law  as  to  make  it  less  cruel  in  its  enactments,  less 
severe  in  its  judgments,  less  barbarous  in  its  modes  and 
instruments — in  a  word,  more  just  and  more  humane.  The 
Perfect  Man  was  an  ideal  of  goodness,  which  was  so  presented 
to  actual  men  as  to  tempt  them  to  live  more  worthily  and 
to  aspire  more  wholly  after  better  things.  So  man  transcen- 
dent is  man  ideal,  above  nature  while  within  it,  able  to  ex- 


92  MORAL   PERSONALITIES   ARE 

plain  it,  incapable  of  explanation  by  it.  And  if  we  find  the 
ideal  of  the  Perfect  Man  realized,  must  we  not  conceive  him 
in  whom  it  is  impersonated  as  essentially  supernatural  in 
quality,  and  in  intrinsic  worth  of  being  above  anything  which 
nature  can  produce  ? 

4.  Since  the  moral  law  is  immanent  in  man  and  realized 
by  his  will,  it  follows  that  all  moral  good  is  personal  in  its 
source,  originates  with  persons,  is  realized  in  persons,  and  is 
by  means  of  persons  incorporated  in  the  laws,  institutions, 
and  agencies  which  protect,  preserve,  and  develop  it.  There 
is,  indeed,  no  factor  of  change  or  cause  of  progress  known 
to  history  or  human  experience  equal  in  efficiency  to  the 
great  personality  —  the  man  who  embodies  some  creative 
and  causal  idea.  It  is  not  nearly  so  true  that  great  move- 
ments or  moments  produce  great  men  as  that  the  men  create 
the  moments.  The  wars  of  the  world  bear  the  marks  of  their 
leaders  ;  and  each  has  been  glorious  or  ignoble,  brilliant 
or  disgraceful,  just  as  its  captain  has  been.  What  is  the 
history  of  art  but  the  biographies  of  great  artists  ?  Where 
would  Greek  sculpture  have  been  without  Pheidias,  or  modern 
painting  without  Raphael,  or  music  without  the  Masters? 
Has  not  science  been  made  by  certain  supreme  minds,  dis- 
coveries by  certain  daring  explorers,  political  order  and  ideas 
elaborated  and  embodied  in  politics  by  genius  in  the  form 
of  statesmen  ?  It  is  personality  that  counts  in  all  things, 
and  most  of  all  in  that  concentrated  form  of  moral  good  which 
we  call  religion.  For  religion  has  at  once  this  distinction 
and  value  :  it  is  moral  good  under  its  most  august  and 
sovereign  aspect,  as  it  affects  man's  inmost  being  and  ulti- 
mate relations.  It  is  good  sub  specie  ceternitatis,  enlarging 
mortal  into  immortal  bein^.  and  reconciling  man  to  himself 

*T5  '  O 

and  to  the  whole  infinite  order,  which  dignifies  him  by- 
making  him  needful  to  its  completeness.  In  this  realm 
there  is  no  great  and  no  small,  for  all  the  categories  are 
infinite  and  all  the  ends  are  divine. 


CREATIONS  AND  AGENTS  OF  GOD     93 

5.  If,  then,  man,  by  his  moral  being  touches  the  skirts  of 
God,  and  God  in  enforcing  His  law  is  ever,  by  means  of 
great  persons,  shaping  the  life  of  man  to  its  diviner  issues, 
what  could  be  more  consonant,  alike  with  man's  nature 
and  God's  method  of  forming  or  re-forming  it,  than  that  Me 
should  send  a  supreme  Personality  as  the  vehicle  of  highest 
good  to  the  race?  Without  such  a  Personality  the  moral 
forces  of  time  would  lack  unity,  and  without  unity  they 
would  be  without  organization,  purpose  or  efficiency.  If  a 
Person  has  appeared  in  history  who  has  achieved  such  a  posi- 
tion and  fulfilled  such  functions,  how  can  He  be  more  fitly 
described  than  as  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Saviour  of  man  ? 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  QUESTION   AS  AFFECTED   BY  THE   PROBLEM   OF  EVIL 

A.    HISTORICAL  AND  CRITICAL 

I.     HoOev  TO 


I.  ^  I  ^HE  doctrine  that  man's  nature  embodies  a  moral  ideal 
A  which  he  is  bound  to  realize,  is  more  easy  to  believe 
and  to  vindicate  when  stated  in  the  abstract  than  when  set 
face  to  face  with  the  facts  of  life.  For,  as  a  matter  of  experi- 
ence, man  has  not  realized  the  moral  ideal.  If  theology 
knows  depravity,  history  is  acquainted  with  cruelty  and 
wickedness  in  high  places  and  in  low  ;  ethics  are  as  familiar 
with  vice  as  religion  is  with  sin  ;  and  philosophy  has  no 
harder  or  more  obstinate  questions  than  those  connected  with 
the  origin  and  the  existence  of  evil.  Indeed  there  is  no 
problem  that  has  so  perplexed  our  finest  spirits,  reducing 
some  to  silent  despair,  rousing  some  to  eloquent  doubt,  and 
forcing  not  a  few  into  unbelief ;  while  probably  a  multitude  no 
man  can  number  have  saved  faith  by  forcing  their  reason  to 
sit  dumb  and  blind  before  the  mystery  it  could  not  penetrate 
or  unravel.  One  of  the  most  beautiful  and  pious  spirits.it 
has  ever  been  my  privilege  to  know,  was  a  man  who  had 
been  trained  to  the  office  of  the  preacher,  who  had  distin- 
guished himself  as  a  scholar  and  as  a  thinker,  and  who  had 
become  the  hope  of  his  college,  his  professors,  and  his  Church. 
One  day  it  fell  to  him  to  proclaim  in  public  what  he  had 
tried  to  learn  in  the  study  and  in  the  classroom  ;  but,  as  he 
stood  and  faced  the  upturned  eyes  of  men,  there  came  such 


SUFFERING   AND   DOUBT  95 

a  vision  of  the  evils  that  filled  life  and  the  impotence  of  the 
Will  which  seemed  to  rule  the  world,  as  well  as  of  the 
preacher  and  of  the  word  he  preached  either  to  mend  or 
to  end  them,  that  he  vowed  unto  the  God  in  whose  goodness 
he  still  believed,  that  were  he  only  allowed  to  escape  with  his 
reason  from  that  appalling  place,  he  would  not  again  lift  up 
his  voice  in  a  pulpit  until  he  had  a  message  better  fitted  for 
the  supreme  crisis  of  the  soul  sojourning  amid  scenes  so 
confused  and  perplexing.  That  message  never  came  to  him, 
and  he  retired  into  a  silence  that  nothing  could  tempt  him  to 
break,  vanquished  by  the  potency  of  evil. 

Another  and  more  distinguished  thinker  has  charged  nature 
with  perpetrating  on  the  most  stupendous  scale  every  crime 
and  cruelty  man  has  ever  been  guilty  of:  "  Nature  impales 
men,  breaks  them  as  if  on  the  wheel,  casts  them  to  be  de- 
voured by  wild  beasts,  burns  them  to  death,  crushes  them 
with  stones  like  the  first  Christian  martyr,  starves  them  with 
hunger,  freezes  them  with  cold,  poisons  them  by  the  quick  or 
slow  venom  of  her  exhalations,  and  has  hundreds  of  other 
hideous  deaths  in  reserve,  such  as  the  ingenious  cruelty  of  a 
Nabis  or  a  Domitian  never  surpassed."  And  he  has  made  out 
a  dread  catalogue  of  the  deeds  which  "  Nature  does  with  the 
most  supercilious  disregard  both  of  mercy  and  justice,"  end- 
ing with  "  the  hurricane  and  the  pestilence  "  which  overmatch 
"anarchy  and  the  Reign  of  Terror"  "in  injustice,  ruin,  and 
death."1  That  indictment  by  John  Stuart  Mill  may,  as  was 
long  ago  noted,  recall  the  famous  stanzas  of  Tennyson  on 
the  man — 

"Who  trusted  Cod  was  love  indeed, 
And   love  creation's   final   law  — 
Tho'   Nature,   red   in   tooth  and  claw 
With   ravin,   shrieked  against  his  creed." 

But  while  there  is  in  both  an  equal  feeling  of  the  savagerv 
of  nature,  there  was  not  in  Mill  any  sense  of  the  "love 

1  J.  S.  Mill,  Essays  on  /u •//>/('//,  pp.  29-31. 


96 

indeed."  It  was  the  conflict  of  nature's  way  with  man's 
sense  of  justice  that  compelled  him  to  judge  her  so  terribly  ; 
it  was  not  its  contradiction  to  a  heart  of  infinite  pity  in  the 
God  who  had  made  man. 

2.  But  the  evil  that  perplexes  most  is  not  physical  or 
natural ;  were  it  only  this,  man  might  bear  it  with  patience  or 
fight  against  it  with  courage,  or  at  least  refuse  to  let  it  van- 
quish his  better  manhood.  The  evil  which  perplexes  his  reason, 
enfeebles  his  will,  and  confounds  his  conscience,  is  moral,  not 
physical.  Crime,  vice,  sin,  the  lusts  that  in  their  search  for 
pleasure  make  pain,  the  passions,  the  lecheries,  and  the 
brutalities  that  possess  man  and  desolate  men,  are  the  evils 
that  create  astonishment  and  dismay,  for  they  do  not  simply 
inflict  suffering,  they  waste  what  is  the  most  god-like  thing 
known  to  time — the  soul  and  its  happiness.  The  darkest  of 
all  the  visions  that  can  appal  the  imagination  is  that  of  the 
wasted  manhood  of  the  world  ;  the  savage  peoples  that,  on 
dark  or  fertile  continents  or  beautiful  sun-lit  islands,  have 
lived  and  died  hardly  men  ;  the  wasted  men  and  women, 
possibly  a  vaster  multitude  than  all  the  savage  peoples  in  the 
heart  of  Africa  and  in  the  Southern  Seas,  who  in  civilized 
lands  and  in  Christian  cities  have  lived  to  be  little  else  than 
the  causes  or  instruments  or  victims  of  sin.  And  the  vision, 
if  it  be  that  of  a  religious  imagination,  will  not  be  confined 
to  time  ;  it  will  range  into  eternity  as  well.  The  thought  of 
a  man  who  has  been  base  enough  to  seduce,  or  of  a  woman 
wretched  enough  to  be  seduced,  and  to  avenge  her  seduction 
by  becoming  in  turn  a  seducer  ;  the  thought  of  the  miseries 
and  the  diseases  that  have  gone  on  multiplying  themselves  at 
an  almost  incalculable  ratio  through  generations  of  mortals 
\vho  are,  or  who  ought  to  be,  on  their  way  to  immortality, 
is  in  all  soberness  and  truth,  a  thought  oppressive  and 
painful  beyond  what  the  most  solid  reason  can  calmly  bear. 
And  if  consolation  be  sought  in  the  faith  that  God  has  no 
pleasure  in  the  death  of  the  wicked,  but  will  have  all  men  to 


AFFECTS   FAITH  IN  GOD  97 

be  saved,  then  out  of  that  very  comfort  new  perplexities  come 
—Why  then  is  His  will  so  impotent  ?  Why  do  so  many 
perish  as  if  the  Maker  cared  for  them  no  more  than  the 
slaver  cares  for  the  slaves  he  carries  in  his  hold  ?  That  old 
mystery  of  evil  is  still  a  new  mystery — most  invincible  of  all  the 
obstinate  spectres  which  haunt  human  thought,  and  which  will 
not  be  exorcized.  To  face  it  and  to  feel  its  force  is  to  taste  to 
the  full  that  misery  which  Pascal  said  "  proved  the  grandeur 
of  man,"  the  misery  of  a  being  who  knows  himself  suspended 
between  the  abysses  of  nonentity  and  infinity  ;  a  nothing  as 
compared  with  the  universe,  a  universe  as  contrasted  with 
nothing.  In  the  moment  when  that  misery  is  keenest  and  the 
knowledge  it  brings  most  vivid,  the  words  of  the  ancient  poet 
speak  to  us  as  if  they  voiced  the  truth — the  happiest  thing 
would  have  been  never  to  be  born  ;  the  next  in  happiness  is 
for  the  living  to  return  as  quickly  as  possible  to  the  place 
whence  he  came. 

3.  Our  perplexity  is  further  increased  by  the  fact  that  this 
mystery  is  made  more  mysterious  by  those  high  and  sacred 
beliefs  which  ought  to  be  its  full  and  final  explanation.  The 
shadow  that  Theism  so  feels  and  fears  Theism  deepens  and 
darkens,  if,  indeed,  it  does  not  altogether  make  the  shadow. 
For  if  men  did  not  believe  in  a  good  God,  or  if  they  had  not 
the  mood  or  disposition  that  this  belief  has  created  in  humanity, 
they  would  not  feel  evil  to  be  so  insoluble  a  mystery.  To  a 
man  who  believes  in  mechanical  necessity,  or  a  fixed  fate, 
every  fact  of  life,  including  its  evil,  will  remain  as  it  is  ;  but 
then  his  conscience  will  not  be  burdened,  nor  his  heart 
afflicted,  nor  his  reason  perplexed,  as  they  will  be  if  he  believes 
in  a  free  and  beneficent  Deity.  If  he  imagines  that  the  <>nlv 
sovereign  in  the  universe  is  the  force  which  holds  cverv 
individual  in  its  iron  grasp,  ,-ind  necessitates  evcrv  act  he 
does,  every  thought  he  thinks,  and  every  event  that  happens 
to  him  ;  if  he  believes  that  man  can  only  do  what  he  must, 
that  there  is  for  him  no  pit}'  anywhere  in  nature,  and  that 

P.C.K.  7 


98  THE   PROBLEM   FORMULATED 

there  is  no  higher  will  to  which  his  miseries  can  make  their 
dumb  appeal  for  mercy, — then  he  may,  perhaps,  regard  evil, 
and  with  it  existence,  as  a  thing  intolerable  to  him  as  an 
individual,  but  he-  will  not  feel  compelled  to  pronounce 
judgment  against  the  almighty  Energy  which  produced  both 
him  and  it.  For  where  there  is  no  choice  and  no  morality, 
there  can  be  no  responsibility  and  no  condemnation.  But  if 
a  man  believes  that  there  is  a  powerful  and  righteous  God, 
the  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the  world,  he  is,  in  the  very  degree 
that  he  is  thoughtful,  certain  to  be  perplexed  by  the  problem, 
'  Why  has  He  allowed  evil  to  exist  ?  '  And  he  may  fall  a 
victim  to  some  swift  and  dexterous  piece  of  logic  like  this  : 
'  Either  He  could  have  prevented  evil,  but  would  not ;  or  He 
would  have  prevented  it,  but  could  not.  If  I  accept  the  first 
alternative,  then  I  must  conclude  that  He  is  a  being  of 
imperfect  goodness  ;  if  I  accept  the  second,  the  conclusion 
must  be  that  He  is  a  being  of  imperfect  power.  In  either 
case  He  is  less  perfect  than  the  God  I  had  imagined  myself 
to  believe  in.  It  is  inconceivable  that  a  perfectly  good  being 
could  have  allowed  so  much  evil  to  enter,  and  to  devastate 
the  world.' 

Evil,  then,  when  viewed  in  relation  to  existence  and  to 
its  Author,  formulates  the  gravest  problem  that  a  man 
who  believes  in  a  personal  God  can  face.  But  whether 
he  believes  in  Him  or  not,  it  remains  a  problem,  acute  in 
the  degree  that  his  view  of  life  is  moral.  Two  antithetical 

o 

systems  of  thought — the  one  either  personal  and  theistic  or 
impersonal  and  pantheistic,  and  the  other  either  mechanical 
and  non-theistic,  or  conceiving  creation  as  the  work  of  an 
irresponsible  and  unconscious,  though  motived,  cause — have 
attempted  to  deal  seriously  with  this  question.  The  one 
which  it  is  customary  to  term  Optimism;  conceives  existence 
as  good  in  spite  of  its  evil,  or  even,  in  certain  cases,  because 
of  evil  and  through  it.  The  other,  which  as  its  antithesis 
bears  the  name  of  Pessimism,  is  a  philosophy  which  gives 


OPTIMISM   AS   A   SOLUTION  99 

scientific  expression  to  the  view  that  life  is  hateful  because 
of  its  attendant  evils,  and  it  may  even  conceive  existence  as 
in  its  essence  so  bad  that  it  had  better  never  have  been. 

§    II.     Optimism  and  Ei'il 

I.  Optimism  is,  in  a  sense,  implicit  in  Theism.  The  more 
perfect  we  conceive  God  to  be,  the  less  can  we  predicate  evil 
of  His  works.  As  Plato  said,  "the  deeds  of  the  Best  could 
never  be  or  have  been  other  than  the  fairest  "  ;  and  so  the 
world  He  created  was  "  by  nature  fairest  and  best,"  l  "  as 
far  as  possible  a  perfect  whole  and  of  perfect  parts,"  2  and 
could  be  described,  in  terms  that  become  the  Maker  rather 
than  the  thing  made,  as  the  "visible  God,  the  image  of  the 
Intelligible,  the  greatest,  best,  fairest,  most  perfect,  the  one 
only  begotten  heaven." 3  But  this  is  nature  interpreted 
through  God,  while  the  very  essence  of  the  problem  is  the 
interpretation  of  the  character  and  ways  of  God  through 
nature.  The  Stoic  was  even  more  certain  than  Plato  that 
the  creation  was,  in  its  kind  and  measure,  as  perfect  as  the 
Creator,  but  he  had  to  maintain  his  belief  in  the  face  of  an 
acuter  moral  sense  and  a  more  emphasized  moral  law.  And 
he  did  this  by  affirming,  in  spite  of  his  belief  in  an  invincible 
fate,  that  there  were  limits  to  Divine  power  which  could 
as  little  keep  man  free  from  moral  evil  as  from  physical 
disease;4  that  it  was  as  irrational  to  think  that  God  could 
connive  at  wickedness  as  that  law  could  be  guilty  of  crime  ;5 
that  like  the  vulgar  jest  in  the  play,  evil  might  be  offensive, 
but,  blended  with  the  whole,  it  heightened  the  general  effect;6 
and  that  it  was  here  to  train  character  and  to  be,  therefore, 
finally  transmuted  into  good.7  But  the  difficulty  became 

1    7  iiiiit-ns,  p.  30.  '   Ibid.  32.  3   Ibid.  92. 

4  Cieanthes,  Hymn,  17  ff.  ;    Plutarch,  Dt  Stoic.  Repub.,  21,  44  ;  36,  I. 
•''   Chrysippus  in  Pint.,  DC  Stoic.  Rchub.,  33,  2. 

"  Marcus  Aurelius,   vi.   42,   with   the    reference    to    Chrysippus,    Plut., 
A  if::  Stoic.,  14. 

7  Chrysippus  in  Plut.,  Adi:  Stoic.,  13  ;  cf.  DC  Stoic.  AV/>.,  35,  3. 


ioo  HOW   EVIL   AND   SIN   DIFFER 

vaster  and  more  acute  to  Christian  than  it  had  been  to 
Hellenic  thought,  for  to  the  Christian  mind  God  was  more 
personal,  more  august  and  beneficent,  while  sin  was  a  subtler 
and  more  terrible  conception  than  evil,  a  power  more -de- 
structive while  less  destructible.  For  sin  was  conceived  as  a 
sort  of  impersonal  and  diabolical  counterpart  of  God,  able 
to  maintain  itself  against  Him,  with  a  kingdom  of  its  own,, 
propagating  itself  and  multiplying  its  effects  by  means  of  the 
order  He  had  instituted,  compelling  His  very  justice  to 
encourage  its  growth  and  continue  its  being  by  making  the 
habit  of  sinning  the  supreme  penalty  of  the  act  of  sin.  And 
so  it  was  no  mere  ironical  Nemesis,  but  an  inexorable  law 
of  logic,  that  laid  upon  Augustine,  the  Father  who  was  mainly 
responsible  for  this  doctrine,  the  duty  of  vindicating  the 
Providence  whose  ways  it  seemed  so  seriously  to  impugn. 
His  apology  followed  several  distinct  lines,  some  of  which 
were  more  germane  to  the  notion  of  evil  than  of  sin,  having 
been  suggested  by  the  Greeks  themselves,  who  had  chiefly 
influenced  him.  Thus  he  argues,  after  Plotinus,  that  evil  is 
nothing  real,  but  is  simply  negative,  a  negation  of  being,  and 
especially  of  God,  who  is  the  most  real  of  all  beings.  Hence 
he  boldly  formulated  the  position,  "  in  quantum  est,  quidquid 
est,  bonum  est." 1  There  is  but  one  God,  one  supreme 
essence,  from  whom  whatever  is  holds  its  existence.  As  He 
is  good,  all  His  works,  i.e.  all  created  being,  must  be  the 
same  ;  and  so  evil  ought  to  be  conceived  as  negative,  an 
attempt  to  deny  or  abolish  the  works  and  the  acts  of  God. 
The  more  being  abounds,  the  more  abundant  becomes  the 
good  ;  the  more  it  is  restricted  or  encroached  on  by  the 
unreal,  the  more  evil  prevails.  But  Augustine  knew  that 
metaphysics  of  this  sort  could  do  little  to  comfort  those  to 
whom  misery  was  an  actual  experience  and  sin  a  profound 
reality.  So  he  argued,  as  the  Stoics  had  done,  that  evil  is 

1  De  Vera  ReL,  9  ;  cf.  De  Civ.  Dei,  xii.  6,  7  ;  De  Ord.,  ii.  20. 


GRACE   THE    ANTITHESIS   OF   SIN  101 

needed  to  enhance  the  beauty  and  the  glory  of  the  world.1 
It  is  like  the  barbarisms  which  the  poets  love  to  use  now  and 
then  as  a  foil  to  their  own  elegance.2  Time  is  like  a  picture 
which  needs  the  shadows  as  well  as  the  light  for  its  loveliest 
effects. :i  Even  the  eternal  fires  of  hell,  however  penal  to  the 
sinner,  tend  to  magnify  the  beauty  of  the  whole,  and  exalt 
the  glory  of  the  mighty  Artificer.4  But  Augustine's  own 
contribution  as  a  theologian  to  the  solution  of  the  problem 
was  of  a  nobler  and  more  satisfactory  order.  Over  against 
the  potency  of  sin  he  placed  the  omnipotence  of  God  ;  over 
against  its  power  to  ruin  he  set  the  grace  that  saved.  Sin 
must  be  conceived  through  an  antithesis,  without  which  it 
never  could  have  been.  Christ  was  not  because  of  Adam,  but 
Adam  because  of  Christ.  Man  had  not  been  allowed  to  sin 
that  God  might  be  free  to  punish,  but  that  He  might  have  the 
opportunity  to  save.  Sin  entered  that  grace  might  abound. 
Through  sin  as  occasion,  though  not  by  means  of  it  as  cause, 
God  was  brought  nearer  to  man,  suffered  with  him,  endured 
sacrifice  for  him,  and  lifted  him  out  of  his  evil  to  a  higher 
glory  than  he  could  without  it  have  attained.  But  it  was  a 
dangerous,  if  a  daring,  feat  to  raise  evil  into  a  means  of  good  : 
it  invited  a  damaging  retort  as  to  the  bungling  character  of 
the  workman  who  had  to  mar  his  work  in  order  that  he 
might  find  some  way  of  perfecting  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
retort  was  given,  for  the  thought  which  so  lightly  touched  evil 
could  not  bear  to  feel  the  shadow  of  sin.  But  ancient  philoso- 
phy in  all  its  classical  forms  had  been  struck  with  decrepitude, 
and  the  criticism  of  the  decrepit  is  more  querulous  than 
creative  or  illuminative.  On  the  other  hand  the  eclectic  specu- 
lations which  Augustine  had  so  largely  absorbed,  made  no 
notable  contribution  to  the  discussion,  while  in  theology  the 
reign  of  dogma  was  at  hand,  and  thought  moved  from  the 


1   De  Civ.  Dei,  xiv.  27.  »  Ibid.  xi.  18. 

*  Ibid.  xi.  ;   De  Ord.,  \.  1 8.  4   DC  Civ.  Dei,  xii.  4. 


102  EVIL  IN   THE   RENAISSANCE 

problems  of  the  reason  to  the  more  pressing  and  practical 
questions  of  ecclesiastical  organization. 

The  mediae val  schoolmen  were,  on  the  whole  (there  were 
certain  conspicuous  exceptions),  faithful  to  Augustine,  lived 
in  his  intellectual  world,  faced  his  problems,  and  acutely 
discussed  such  questions  as,  Whether  all  things,  in  so  far  as 
they  really  exist,  are  good.  But  the  hour  came  when  the 
ancient  world  awoke,  and  mind,  hearing  its  voice,  awoke  with 
it  and  tried  to  look  at  life  in  the  light  of  the  common  reason  ; 
but  though  the  classical  literatures  helped  to  open  the  eyes, 
yet  they  could  not  silence  the  conscience.  And  so  while  the 
thinkers  of  the  Renaissance  learned  to  speak  of  evil,  they  still 
thought  of  sin  ;  but  sin  was  less  amenable  to  the  categories 
of  ancient  thought  than  evil.  The  first  Teutonic  scholar  to  be 
renewed  by  the  knowledge  of  antiquity,  Nicholas  of  Cusa, 
is  also  here  the  finest  exponent  of  the  new  mind.  While 
Greece  awoke  in  him  the  feeling  for  nature,  it  did  not  take 
from  him  his  inherited  passion  for  God  ;  rather,  as  he  himself 
tells  us,  it  begot  in  him  the  ambition  of  uniting  the  two  in  a 
single  conception.1  God  is  superessential,  and  can  be  ex- 
pressed in  no  category.2  He  is  the  eternal  Unity  which  is 
prior  to  all  variety,  and  the  ground  of  all  change.3  He  is 
the  synthesis  of  all  being,  all  is  in  Him,  and  He  is  in  all.4 
Nature  is  an  organism  whose  soul  is  God,n  and  whose  organs 
are  the  infinite  multitude  of  persons  who  live  and  move  and 
exist  in  Him.  The  world  is  nothing  but  the  apparition  of 
the  invisible  God  ;  God  is  but  the  invisibility  of  all  visible 
existences.6  Since  the  two  are  so  related,  each  must  be  as 
the  other  is  ;  disharmony  can  neither  mar  its  life  nor  disturb 
His  ;  He  is  the  absolutely  perfect  Being,  and  it  is  the  most 
perfect  world  possible.7  The  philosophical  successor  of 

1  De  do  eta  Ignor.,  iii.  ad  fin.  2  Ibid.  ii.  8. 

8  Ibid.  ii.  5.  4  Ibid.  iii.  4. 

5  Ibid.  ii.  13.      Nicholas'  phrase  is  inens  mundi  ;  cf.  De  Pass.,  175. 

*  De  docta  Ignor.,  i.  1 1  ;  cf.  De  Conjecturis,  ii.  10. 

7   De  docta  Ignor.,  ii.  4  ;  De  ludo  Globi,  \.  154. 


AND  IN   MODERN   PHILOSOPHY  103 

Nicholas  was  Giordano  Bruno,  who  developed  the  notion  of 
God  as  the  Unity  of  all  difference  into  an  explicit  and 
conscious  Pantheism. 

2.  But  our  concern  is  not  with  the  logic  that  made  men 
pantheists  ;  it  is  with  the  modes  in  which  the  ideas  of  God 
and  evil  affected  each  other  in  minds  that  had  ceased  to 
believe  in  Christian  theology  while  living  face  to  face  with 
the  Christian  religion.  Now  the  remarkable  thing  is  that  just 
as  thought  became  less  Christian,  the  problem  of  evil  grew 
at  once  more  mysterious  and  more  imperative.  Christianity 
is  the  only  religion  that  has  dared  to  articulate  a  theology 
from  the  premiss  not  simply  of  God's  sole  sovereignty,  but  of 
His  direct  responsibility  for  man  ;  and  has  had  at  the  same 
time  the  courage  to  conceive  man  as  capable  of  alienating 
himself  from  God  and  of  making  evil  his  deity.  For 
centuries  the  Christian  notion  of  sin  had  held  man  in  its 
burning  hands,  magnifying  his  power,  but  darkening  his  state 
and  his  destiny  ;  for  many  centuries  he  had  believed  in  a  God 
infinitely  good  and  gracious,  the  Maker  of  a  race  that  had 
chosen  to  become  bad,  the  Redeemer  of  the  race  from  the 
evil  its  own  choice  had  made.  These  things  stood  inclis- 
solubly  together:  man's  act,  or  the  sin  that  alienated  ;  God's 
action,  or  the  grace  that  saved.  But  the  denial  of  the 
Christian  redemption  left  men  standing  face  to  face  with  two 
ideas  they  could  neither  deny  nor  relate  and  reconcile,  God 
and  evil.  This  antithesis  stood  at  its  sharpest  in  Deism, 
which  loved  to  describe  itself  as  a  system  of  natural  religion, 
but  which  we  may  describe  as  an  attempt  to  conceive  God 
in  the  manner  of  the  Christian  religion  without  any  of  the 
experiences,  beliefs,  and  associations  that  had  made  it  possible 
so  to  conceive  Him.  God  was  good,  and  evil  was  the  grimmest 
of  all  realities.  He  had  made  the  world,  and  had  allowed 
sin  to  enter  it,  yet  lie  would  not  touch  the  world  lie  had 
made  or  do  anything  to  save  it  from  the  evil  lie  had  allowed. 
Hence  came  a  stupendous  problem,  which  Deism  did  its  best 


104  LEIBNITZ  :   KINDS   OF   EVIL 

not  to  see  ;  and  the  easiest  way  not  to  see  it  was  to  say,  and 
keep  on  saying,  "  Everything  which  exists  is  according  to 
a  good  order,  and  for  the  best."  The  "  perfect  Theist " 
was  defined  to  be  the  man  who  "  believed  that  everything  is 
governed,  ordered,  or  regulated  for  the  best  by  a  designing 
principle  or  mind,  necessarily  good  and  permanent."  l  This 
is  the  optimism  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  it  has  two 
classical  representatives — Leibnitz  and  Pope.  It  is  hardly 
fair,  indeed,  to  bracket  two  such  men  together,  for  Leibnitz 
was  the  most  original  speculative  intellect  of  his  day,  an 
orthodox  Protestant,  while  a  rational  theist ;  but  Pope  was, 
while  a  Catholic,  a  very  conventional  and  derivative  deist,  who 
proudly  acknowledged  that  the  views  unfolded  in  his  rhymed 
argumentation  were  borrowed. 

(i.)  Leibnitz  expressed  his  view,  philosophically,  in  his  Theo- 
dicee?  and  its  formula  has  passed  into  general  literature — 
"This  is  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds."  He  emphasized  the 
word  "possible."  Nature  did  not  exist  by  necessity  ;  it  might 
or  it  might  not  have  been,  and  it  was  because  God  had  so 
willed.  A  better  world  might  be  imagined,  but  no  better 
could  have  been  made.  Leibnitz's  idea  had  a  positive  and  a 
negative  basis  ;  the  positive  was  the  goodness  and  wisdom  of 
God.  Since  He  was  what  He  was,  He  could  be  satisfied  with 
nothing  less  than  the  best  attainable.  The  negative  basis 
may  be  termed  the  limitations  which  thought  must  set  to 
the  Divine  power.  God  could  accomplish  only  the  possible, 
and  a  moral  world  without  evil  was  beyond  the  resources 
even  of  Omnipotence.  The  only  perfect  being  was  the 
Infinite,  but  the  Infinite  could  not  be  made  ;  the  created  must 
be  limited,  and  where  limitation  is,  there  evil,  in  one  form  or 
another,  must  be.  Leibnitz  distinguished  evil  as  of  three  classes 
— metaphysical,  physical,  and  ethical.3  (a)  The  metaphysical 

1  Shaftesbury,  Cliaracteristics,  vol.  ii.  pp.  4,  5. 

2  Essais  de  I  licodicce  snr  la  Bonte  dc  Die  it*  la.  Libert  e  de  Fhomme  et 
VOrigine  du  Mai,  1710.  3  Ibid.  p.  85,  §  21. 


THE   BEST   POSSIBLE   WORLD  105 

evil  was  primary  ;  it  was  limitation  of  being,  it  belonged  to 
everything  less  than  God.  Whatever  had  its  being  in  time, 
whatever  had  less  than  infinite  being,  suffered  from  meta- 
physical evil  ;  i.e.  was  forbidden  by  the  very  terms  of  its 
existence  to  possess  within  itself  the  beatitude,  the  absolute 
knowledge,  the  power,  experience,  and  benevolence  of  the 
Deity.  (/3)  Physical  evil  was  due  to  metaphysical ;  wherever 
an  essentially  limited  being  existed  there  was  not  only  the 
capability  but  the  necessity  of  suffering  in  some  form,  either 
privative,  because  the  limited  being  was  without  the  beatitude 
of  the  divine  ;  or  positive,  from  the  operation  upon  the  finite 
or  limited  of  the  infinite  multitude  of  causes  that  make 
up  the  created  universe.  (7)  Ethical  evil  was  the  free  and 
voluntary  disobedience  of  a  moral  being.  The  ability  to 
sin,  nay,  the  certainty  of  sinning,  was  rooted  in  the  original 
or  metaphysical  imperfection  of  the  creature.1  Where  there 
was  limitation  of  knowledge  and  experience  there  could  not 
but  be  subjection  to  an  outer  and  regulative  or  higher  Will. 
But  since  moral  obedience  could  not  be  necessitated,  moral 
disobedience  was  certain  ;  for  inexperience  could  not  but  be 
unstable,  and  where  experiment  was  needed  failure  might 
be  the  surest  way  to  success. 

These  three  kinds  of  evil  so  co-existed  in  the  very  idea 
of  a  moral  universe  that  one  could  not  possibly  be  framed 
so  as  to  exclude  them.  This  was  obvious  to  the  Divine 
Intelligence.  An  infinite  multitude  of  possible  worlds  lay 
before  the  vision  of  God.  Evil  \vas  involved  in  every  one 
\vhich  He  conceived  as  possible,  but  out  of  all  this  infinitude  of 
possibilities  He  selected  for  realization  the  best  possible.  As 
absolutely  good  and  wise,  lie  could  select  no  other.  And  this 
world  lie  selected,  not  because  of  its  evil,  but  in  spite  of  its 
evil,  resolved  to  overrule  the  evil,  which  was  inseparable  fnun 
created  being,  to  its  greater  good  and  His  own  greater  glory. 


1  Ibid.  p.  199,  §  156. 


io6  POPE'S   ESSAY   ON   MAN 

The  only  alternatives,  therefore,  which  Leibnitz  allowed  were 
not  between  a  more  and  a  less  imperfect  world,  but  between 
the  best  possible  and  no  world  at  all.  If  there  was  to  be  no 
evil,  there  must  be  no  creation  ;  if  God  chose  to  create,  He 
had  no  choice  but  to  create  the  metaphysically  imperfect,  i.e. 
those  capable  of  suffering  and  of  doing  evil.  And  here  he 
introduced  two  important  modifying  ideas  :  (a)  Creation  was 
not  a  completed  event,  but  a  continuous  process  ;  *  if  God 
ceased  to  act,  nature  and  man  would  cease  to  be  ;  and  He 
acts  freely,  ever  willing  and  working  the  creature's  good.  And 
(/3)  this  good  is  progressive  ;  as  man  improves  evil  decays, 
the  improvement  being  the  work  of  God,  the  deterioration, 
or  delay  in  realizing  the  good,  the  work  of  man.  God  is 
related  to  the  world  of  actual  forces  as  the  stream  to  the  boat 
which  floats  upon  it.  If  the  progress  of  the  boat  is  hindered, 
it  is  not  by  the  stream,  but  by  obstacles  on  the  banks  or  in 
its  course.  "  And  God  is  as  little  the  cause  of  evil  as  the 
current  of  the  river  is  the  cause  which  retards  the  movement 
of  the  boat."  2  He  so  guides  and  controls  the  world,  which 
His  creative  action  ever  renews,  that  even  from  its  evil  we 
shall  yet  reap  a  large  harvest  of  good. 

(ii.)  Pope's  view  was  expressed  in  his  "Essay  on  Man,"  which 
crudely,  though  poetically,  summarized  the  deistic  optimism 
that  had  in  Bolingbroke  its  elegant  and  prolix  exponent. 
His  optimism  had  its  formula  in  the  familiar  words — 

"  Whatever  is,  is  right," 

and  it  had,  in  effect,  three  principles.  First,  the  sovereign 
will  was  cosmical  rather  than  ethical  ;  its  absolute  might 
made  all  its  deeds  and  decrees  right.  Hence  he  did  not  so 
much  explain  how  moral  evil  came  to  be  as  deny  that  it  was. 

"  If  plagues  or  earthquakes  break  not  heaven's  design, 
Why  then  a  Borgia  or  a  Cataline?" 

The  Creator 

"  Pours  fierce  ambition  in  a  Cesar's   mind." 

1   Thcodicee^  pp.  375-378,  §§  382-385.  2  Ibid.  p.  91,  §  30. 


POVERTY   OF   DEISTIC  OPTIMISM  107 

And  it  was  as  little  natural  to  expect 

"Eternal  springs  and  cloudless  skies, 
As  men  for  ever  temp'rate,  calm,  and  wise." 

He  so  works  out  the  parallel  between  nature  and  man, 
between  physical  events  and  moral  characters  and  acts,  that 
the  moral  becomes  even  as  the  physical  ;  and  his  right  is  too 
much  the  product  of  might  to  be  the  equivalent  of  Augus- 
tine's "  good  "  or  Leibnitz's  "  best  possible."  Hence,  secondly, 
he  is  as  unjust  to  suffering  as  to  sin,  and  sacrifices  without 
scruple  the  individual  to  the  universal.  The  principle  that 
"  partial  evil  is  universal  good "  is  construed  to  mean  that 
the  person  who  suffers  ought  to  be  content  to  bear  the 
evil  he  suffers  from  because  it  serves  great  universal  ends. 
He  should  not  rebuke  nature  for  enforcing  her  laws,  even 
though  it  be  at  his  expense,  for  only  by  such  enforcement 
can  harmony  be  secured.  And  all  the  evil  that  disturbed 
and  distressed  us  was  harmony  not  understood.  It  was,  as 
it  were,  the  discord  in  the  universal  symphony  which  made 
its  music  more  majestic  and  more  complete. 

"  Respecting  man,  whatever  wrong  we  call, 
May,  must  be  right,  as  relative  to  all." 

And,  thirdly,  there  was  the  principle  that  evil  ought  not  to 
be  judged  simply  from  this  life,  but  also  from  man's  relation 
to  the  future,  which  had  to  be  invoked  if  the  present  was  to 
be  comprehended.  The  balance  of  our  judgment  needed,  in 
order  to  its  perfect  equilibrium,  to  have  time  counter-weighted 
with  eternity.  And  so  we  were  bidden  to 

"  Hope  humbly,  and  with  trembling  pinions  soar." 

We  might  not  know  the  future,  but  hope  could  make  its 
blessings  a  present  experience. 

"Hope  springs  eternal   in  the  human  breast; 
Man  never  is,  but  always  to  be  blessed/' 

3.  We  may  frankly  confess  that  Pope's  optimism  seems  to  us 
of  the  shallowest.      It  was  but  the  smuir  content  of  the  well- 


io8       VOLTAIRE'S   UNCONSCIOUS   THEODICY 

to-do,  praising  in  polished  metres  the  Providence  which  had 
been  wise  enough  to  make  him  comfortable.  He  rejoices  to 
find  his  happiness  set  off  by  the  abounding  misery.  The 
God  he  so  often  names  does  not  live  ;  He  is  a  mere  abstract 
term  adjusted  to  suit  now  the  premiss,  now  the  conclusion  of 
a  rhymed  syllogism.  What  is  true  of  English  Deism  as  a 
whole,  is  true  of  this  its  most  brilliant  production  :  it  "  was 
only  a  particular  way  of  repudiating  Christianity.  There  was 
as  little  of  God  in  it  as  could  well  be."  1  Candide  is  a  satire 
on  optimism  ;  but  though  it  was  a  piece  of  insolent  impiety, 
I  would  rather  have  Voltaire's  attitude  to  this  question  than 
Pope's.  For  he  showed  that  he  could  be  moved  by  suffering, 
and  could  feel  as  intensely  about  the  calamities  man  endured 
from  the  forces  of  nature  as  about  the  injustice  he  experi- 
enced at  the  hands  of  man.  The  earthquake  of  Lisbon  stirs 
him  almost  as  much  as  the  tragedy  of  Galas,  and  one  respects 
him  the  more  for  the  passion  he  shows,  for  the  indignation 
with  which  he  rejects  the  idea  that  eternal  law  can  justify  the 
massacre  of  the  innocents.  Was  Lisbon  more  wicked  than 
London  or  Paris  ?  Yet 

Lisbonne  est  abimee,  et  Ton  danse  a  Paris. 

In  this  moral  fury  there  was  an  unconscious  Theodicy  ;  if 
the  Sovereign  of  the  universe  be  moral,  it  would  be  infinitely 
more  agreeable  to  Him  than  the  epigrammatical  eulogies  of 
a  poet  more  intent  on  refining  his  numbers  than  touching  the 
heart  of  things.  The  optimism  which  has  not  gravely  faced 
the  immensity  and  the  intensity  of  the  world's  misery  has  no 
claim  to  be  heard.  And  Pope's  claims  are  the  fewer  that  he 
so  played  with  the  greatest  of  human  hopes  and  the  deepest 
of  human  facts ;  for  if  time  cannot  be  justified  without 
eternity,  then,  as  time  is  all  that  is  known  to  our  experience, 
the  result  is  a  serious  impeachment  of  the  divine  rectitude. 
We  may  be  quite  unable  to  judge  a  complete  work  until  the 

1  Mr.  John  Morley,  Voltaire,  p.  95. 


EVIL   AND   THE   LAW   OF   EVOLUTION       109 

work  be  completed,  yet  it  is  mischievous  logic  which  seeks 
to  make  the  universe  we  know  a  thing  incapable  of  vindica- 
tion without  the  help  of  a  universe  we  do  not  know.  If 
Butler's  plea — that  most  of  the  difficulties  of  faith  are  due  to 
a  system  imperfectly  understood,  were  valid,  then,  it  might 
fairly  be  argued,  so  would  its  converse  be,  viz.,  that  a  system 
which  stood  embodied  in  our  own  experience  could  not  be 
justified  by  a  system  which  was  so  far  beyond  it  as  to  have 
no  real  being  for  it.  And  what  could  two  such  opposites  do 
save  neutralize  each  other  ?  Time,  therefore,  ought  to  have 
within  itself  its  own  apology  and  ought  not  to  require  to 
depend  for  justification  on  an  appeal  from  itself  to  eternity. 
It  may  be  of  more  interest  to  remark  that  Pope's  plea  for 
"  partial  evil  "  as  "  universal  good  "  has  almost  an  equivalent 
in  the  speculative  physicism  of  to-day.  It  is  wonderful  how 
our  intellectual  and  moral  thought  has  been  so  penetrated  by 
the  doctrine  of  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  survival  of 
the  fittest  that  we  almost  feel  as  if  it  were  an  eternal  law, 
even  though  the  fittest  be  so  often  the  strongest  rather  than 
the  wisest  or  the  best.  But  in  this  law  of  survival  there 
are  two  sides — one  affecting  the  victor,  another  affecting  the 
vanquished.  It  ma}-  be  an  excellent  thing  to  the  survivor  to 
survive,  but  this  does  not  sweeten  the  lot  of  the  victim  who 
has  had  to  succumb.  And  the  vanquished,  as  much  as  the 
victor,  belongs  to  the  whole  of  life  ;  he  is  as  integral  a  part 
of  the  universe,  and  has,  therefore,  such  rights  as  the  fact  of 
being  may  carry  with  it.  And  it  is  the  whole  of  being  that 
needs  to  be  vindicated.  It  is  possible  to  purchase  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  elect  few  at  too  high  a  price  ;  and  it  is  so 
purchased  when  it  means  the  sacrifice  of  the  infinite  multitude 
of  the  rejected,  each  unit  of  which  had  all  the  possibilities 
of  happiness  or  misery,  of  sensitiveness  to  suffering  and  sus- 
ceptibility to  joy  which  the  survivor  himself  possessed.  And 
if  we  are  to  vindicate  the  law  or  order  of  the  universe,  it  must 
not  simply  be  in  the  eye  and  judgment  of  him  who  has 


no  PANTHEISTIC   OPTIMISM 

survived — the  fact  of  his  own  survival  is  to  him  justification 
enough — but  in  the  eye  of  him  who  has  been  vanquished.  It 
is  the  sufferer  who  needs  to  be  consoled.  It  is  not  the  man 
who  never  had  a  son  who  needs  to  be  comforted  when  a 
mother  mourns  beside  the  bier  of  her  dead  boy.  We  cannot, 
therefore,  exclude  from  consideration  the  weak  who  suffer, 
and  only  magnify  the  strong  who  survive.  If  there  be  partial 
evil,  we  are  not  to  say  that  it  is  made  righteous  by  the 
existence  of  universal  good,  which  is  the  very  point  in  dis- 
pute ;  we  must  tell  those  to  whom  partial  evil  has  been 
the  whole  of  life  what  their  evil  means,  why  their  evil  is, 
and  how  it  stands  related  to  Him  who,  as  the  Author  of  their 
being,  has  sent  them  where  they  have  had  to  suffer  so  severely. 
4.  With  what  many  would  regard  as  pantheistic  optimism 
we  do  not  need  to  concern  ourselves.  It  has  two  distinct 
types — -one  with  a  specially  ethical  temper,  represented  by 
Spinoza  ;  another  with  a  more  intellectual  or  logical  mind, 
represented  by  Hegel.  Neither  of  their  systems  is  indeed 
properly  pantheistic  ;  both  may  better  be  described  as  simply 
speculative  or  philosophical  theisms.  Spinoza  held  evil  to  be 
a  thing  natural  ;  vice  to  be  something  not  to  be  condemned, 
but  to  be  explained.  All  that  is  he  conceived  as  a  mode  of 
the  infinite  B  jing  or  Substance,  and  evil  as  a  necessary  element 
in  the  infinite  modes  which,  as  modifications  of  the  Infinite 
or  God,  were  inseparable  from  Him.  Evil  was  necessary 
because  it  was  privative,  imperfection  being  mere  negation  of 
being,  therefore  proper  to  every  mode  in  the  degree  of  its 
remoteness  from  the  whole  of  being.  He  thus  affirmed  that 
he  could  not  concede  sin  and  evil  to  be  anything  positive, 
still  less  could  anything  be  or  become  contrary  to  the  will 
of  God.1  The  optimism  of  Spinoza  was  thus  due  to  his 
inability  to  recognize  vice  as  voluntary,  wrong  as  optional  ; 
all  was  part  of  a  necessary  system,  and  justified  by  its  neces- 
sity. The  Hegelian  view  was  formulated  in  the  principle 
1  Ep.  xix.,  Opera,  ii.  p.  66  (Van  Vloten  et  Land). 


TRANSITION  TO   PESSIMISM  in 

that  the  actual  was  the  rational.  Find  a  reason  for  what  is, 
and  what  is  will  be  found  to  be  reasonable.  Hegel's  was  the 
optimism  of  a  universal  logic  which  attempted  to  represent 
the  whole  of  time  as  a  dialectical  movement,  and  conceived 
life  under  the  categories  of  thought  ;  and  which,  therefore,  by 
its  constant  need  of  theses  and  antitheses  and  syntheses, 
could  find  no  place  for  that  which  ought  not  to  have  been. 
This,  of  course,  is  a  vague  and  general  statement  as  to  Hegel's 
position,  truer  in  the  abstract  than  in  the  concrete.  It  is 
hard,  nay  impossible,  in  any  rational  philosophy  to  find  a 
place  or  a  reason  for  an  irrational  thing,  which  evil  essentially 
is.  While  no  man  ever  argued  more  cogently  than  Hegel 
to  the  negative  character  of  evil,  no  man  ever  stated  more 
emphatically  its  incompatibility  in  the  concrete  with  the 
moral  ideal.  Evil,  speculatively  construed,  was  "  a  negative 
which,  though  it  would  fain  assert  itself,  has  no  real  persist- 
ence, and  is,  in  fact,  only  the  absolute  sham  existence  of 
negativity  in  itself"  (der  absolute  ScJiein  der  Ncgativatdt 
in  sic/t].1  But  moral  evil  could  not  be  otherwise  conceived 
and  described  than  as  the  incongruity  (Unangemessenheit) 
of  what  is  with  what  ought  to  be.a 

§   III.     Pessimism  Ancient  and  Modern 

I.  From  Optimism  in  its  several  types  Pessimism  stands 
distinguished  thus  :  Evil  is  not  an  incident  capable  of  an 
explanation  which  justifies  either  God  as  the  Author  of 
existence,  or  existence  as  the  handiwork  of  God  ;  but  it  is, 
as  it  were,  the  whole  of  being  ;  it  composes  and  constitutes 
the  whole  picture,  occupies  the  eye  and  prospect  of  the 
soul,  which  cannot  see  life  save  through  evil.  Pessimism  thus 
makes  evil  as  of  the  very  essence  of  being,  and  so  conceives 
the  universe  that  it  does  not  seek  the  preservation  of  being  by 
the  expulsion  of  evil,  but  rather  the  expulsion  of  evil  bv  the 

1  Encyclopiidie,  vol.  i.  p.  73  ;  Wallace's  Logic  oj  /A^v/.  p.  71. 

-  Encyclopddie,  vol.  iii.  p.  564  ;  Wallace's  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  .Mind,  p.  94. 


ii2  CAUSES   OF   PESSIMISM 

abolition  of  existence.  This  means  that  it  cannot  regard  the 
actual  as  the  rational,  but  as  the  irrational  ;  or  the  good  as 
universal  and  evil  as  partial,  but,  on  the  contrary,  evil  is 
universal,  and  there  is  no  good.  It  is  so  far  from  conceiving 
this  as  the  best  of  all  possible  worlds  that  it  describes  it  as 
so  bad  that  no-world  would  have  been  better.  Pessimism 
knows  no  creator  whom  it  can  hold  responsible  for  evil,  nor 
any  sovereign  through  whose  benevolence  or  wisdom  it  can 
be  removed.  Hence  it  is  a  philosophy  which  aims  not  only 
at  explaining  how  existence  happened  to  arise,  but  how  it 
may  most  surely  and  utterly  cease  to  be. 

But  perhaps  we  shall  make  its  real  meaning  more  intelligible 
if,  instead  of  confining  ourselves  to  the  exposition  of  a  single 
term,  we  attempt  to  present  it  in  certain  of  its  historical 
forms,  and  in  relation  to  the  mood  or  temper  which  they 
express.  It  is  peculiar  neither  to  Western  thought  nor  to  our 
own  century.  It  did  not  owe  its  being  to  Schopenhauer  nor 
its  vogue  to  Von  Hartmann  ;  it  expresses  a  temper  which 
is  too  near  the  surface,  and  too  ready  to  express  itself  in 
poignant  speech  to  have  been  so  late  of  birth.  It  has  arisen 
in  different  countries  and  at  different  times,  though  always 
under  similar  conditions  ;  and  it  implies  the  operation  of 
similar  causes,  general  and  personal.  We  find  it  emerging 
wherever  great  wealth,  luxury,  and  refinement  co-exist  with 
want,  famine,  and  the  savage  mood  which  these  beget  in 
civilized  men.  It  belongs  to  times  when  the  forces  that 
work  for  evil  overpower  the  individual  will,  and  undertake  to 
command  masses  of  men.  And  it  springs  from  the  feeling, 
whether  in  a  few  or  in  many  minds,  which  may  be  described 
as  an  attitude  either  of  despondency,  or  of  despair,  or  the  con- 
tempt of  life.  It  is  not  a  normal  or  a  healthy  feeling.  The 
normal  healthy  man  does  not  ask,  "Is  life  worth  living?" 
He  lives  his  life,  or  he  may  try  to  live  it,  worthily,  and  to  fill 
it  with  such  worth  as  he  himself  possesses.  It  is  the  man 
who  despairs  of  life  who  feels  it  a  burden,  doubts  whether  it 


INCONGENIAL   TO   GREEK  MIXD  113 

be  worth  his  while  to  go  through  with  it,  and  concludes  that 
if  it  be  worth  the  trouble  to  do  so,  it  is  only  in  order  that 
he  may  benefit  man  by  helping  him  to  bring  his  existence 
to  a  final  and  more  utter  end. 

2.  Pessimism  was  not  a  mood  very  congenial  to  the 
classical  mind,  especially  as  it  expressed  itself  in  Hellenic 
philosophy.  The  nearest  approach  to  it  we  can  find  is  in 
Cynicism,  but  Cynicism  was  in  many  respects  the  converse  of 
Pessimism.  It  was  marked  not  so  much  by  a  contempt  for 
life  in  the  abstract  as  a  contempt  for  men  who  did  not  live 
worthily.  It  believed  that  life  was  good,  and  that  it  became 
bad  only  when  its  accidents  were  taken  for  its  essence.  It 
believed  in  a  law  that  bound  all  men  to  be  virtuous  ;  and  it 
despised  those  who  claimed  to  be  men  of  worth,  yet  did  not 
observe  or  obey  the  law  they  claimed  to  embody.  It  may 
be  described  as  a  cruder,  a  more  primitive,  and,  in  a  sense, 
a  more  savage  Stoicism.  Greek  Stoicism  and,  in  an  even 
higher  degree,  Roman  was  positive,  an  attempt  to  realize  the 
idea  of  manhood  implanted  in  the  nature  of  man  ;  but 
Cynicism  was  negative,  a  criticism  of  the  lives  of  men  in  the 
light  of  the  ideal.  Yet  the  Cynic  was  not  simply  a  critic  ;  on 
the  contrary,  his  criticism  rested  on  a  doctrine  of  human 
nature  as  ethical  as  the  Stoic,  though  he  had  not  worked  out 
as  genial  a  method  of  perfecting  character.  In  his  scorn  of 
those  who  made  the  accessories  into  the  essence  of  life,  he 
tended  to  dispense  with  even  what  was  good  in  these,  and 
to  despise  refinement  as  well  as  the  luxuries  in  which  it 
imagined  it  seemly  to  be  clothed,  in  order  that  the  nakedness 
of  the  natural  man  might  be  the  better  hidden.  lie  made 
his  protest  against  the  conventional  habits  which  suggested 
the  shameful  and  stimulated  the  sordid  they  were  professedly 
used  to  conceal,  by  attempting  to  live  as  a  barbarian.  Thus 
the  element  of  Pessimism  in  his  thought  was  due  to  the 
clearness  with  which  he  saw  the  evil  in  existing  tendencies, 
societies,  characters,  and  persons;  but  so  far  was  he  fn>m 

P.C.R.  8 


ii4  IN   MEDIAEVAL   RELIGION 

identifying  the  shams  which  he  hated  with  the  whole  of 
being  which  he  loved,  that  he  conceived  evil  as  a  contra- 
diction of  that  law  of  right  and  duty  or  virtue  which  was  the 
highest  of  all  laws,  written  in  the  heart  and  soul  of  man 
for  realization  in  his  conduct  and  in  society. 

Again,  mediaeval  Asceticism  had  certain  principles  and 
features  in  common  with  Pessimism.  It  thought  the  world 
wrong,  too  unclean  to  be  a  fit  home  for  a  holy  man ;  therefore 
a  place  to  be  forsaken  of  him  who  would  save  his  own  soul. 
The  existing  order  of  society  was  conceived  to  be  evil,  and 
it  was  thought  better  that  the  good  man  should  take  himself 
out  of  that  order  than  endanger  his  own  soul  by  remaining 
within  it.  On  its  personal  side  it  was  a  doctrine  of  salvation, 
but  on  its  social  side  it  was  a  doctrine  of  annihilation,  so  far 
at  least  as  its  attitude  signified  that  the  world  was  so  bad 
that  the  pious  man  could  neither  desire  its  continuance,  nor 
do  anything  to  promote  it.  It  was  in  this  latter  aspect  that 
it  agreed  with  Pessimism,  for  it  conceived  secular  society  as 
so  under  the  power  of  evil  that  the  happiest  thing  for  it 
was  to  pass  away  and  perish.  But  here  the  similarity  ended, 
for  Asceticism  cultivated  the  hope  that  One  who  was  more 
potent  than  the  world  might  be  persuaded,  through  the 
penance  and  self-denial  it  practized,  to  save  the  poor  soul  of 
man,  and  to  replace  the  dissolved  secular  society  by  the  new 
and  higher  spiritual  order  called  the  Church. 

3.  These  classical  and  catholic  tendencies  are  typical  of  the 
pessimistic  mood  which  is  never  very  remote  from  any  of  us. 
The  first  impulse  of  the  man  angry  at  the  emptinesses  and 
unrealities  of  human  life,  is  to  rage  at  it  as  all  vanity  and 
vexation  of  spirit.  And  the  quick  overmastering  passion  of 
the  man  who  has  just  been  seized  and  possessed  by  belief  in 
the  reality  of  spiritual  and  eternal  things,  is  to  forsake  a 
world  which  is  absorbed  in  the  enjoyment  of  things  temporal, 
and  to  retire  to  a  solitude  where  he  may  cultivate  his  fears 
and  watch  from  a  distance  sure-footed  fate  overtake  those 


AND   IN   MODERN   POETRY  115 

who  are  too  blind  to  see  its  approach  or  too  sodden  to  care 
for  it.  But  common  tendencies  have  many  forms  besides  the 
ethical  and  the  religious ;  and  some  of  these  the  modern 
pessimistic  mood  has  readily  assumed.  In  the  first  decades 
of  our  century  it  took  an  imaginative  and  emotional  or 
sentimental  shape,  and  had,  in  the  poetry  of  revolt,  extra- 
ordinary vogue.  Goethe,  in  his  earlier  period,  passed  through 
it,  but  he  cultivated  contempt  of  life  only  that  he  might  the 
more  enjoy  it.  He  loved  the  bitter  because  it  helped  to 
flavour  the  sweet.  With  Byron  there  is  more  of  the  genuine 
pessimistic  spirit — the  feeling  that  made  him  love  to  think 
of  himself  as  a  kind  of  martyr,  sacrificed  by  a  too  conven- 
tional society  because  of  his  own  too  conventional  vices.  He 
had  a  vanity  that  only  sang  the  more  that  it  sat  in  the  cold 
shadow  of  criticism,  though  the  song  into  which  it  broke  was 
one  of  vehement  satire  and  vicious  denial.  He  had  the 
sense  of  being  an  outcast  from  his  country  and  his  kind. 

"With  pleasure  drugg'd,  he  almost  longed  for  woe, 
And  e'en  for  change  of  scene  would  seek  the  shades  below." 

But  even  in  him  it  was  a  mood,  a  temper,  now  petulant, 
now  imaginative,  expressing  personal  feeling  rather  than 
reasoned  conviction.  He  had  a  pessimistic  hatred  of  life, 
not  unmingled,  as  far  as  his  vanity  allowed  it,  with  contempt 
of  himself;  and  this,  of  course,  was  only  the  obverse  of  his 
dislike  to  the  society  which  would  not  indulge  him  with 
the  praise  his  temper  imperiously  churned.  I  low  much  it 
was  mood  and  how  little  it  was  reasoned  belief  may  be  seen 
from  its  vivid  contrast  to  the  jubilant  imaginative  idealism  of 
Shelley,  who  so  feels  the  joy  of  existence  that  he  carries  as 
it  were,  his  own  skylark  singing  within  his  breast,  making 
him  feel  as  if  the  only  true  philosophy  of  life  was  a  kind  of 
divine  intermingling  of  being  with  love  and  of  love  with 
being.  But  we  must  distinguish  the  imaginative  temper, 
which  is  strictly  personal,  from  the  philosophical,  which  is 
intellectual  and  universal  ;  and  Pessimism  is  not  the  poetic 


Ii6  PESSIMISM   IN   POLITICS 

expression  of  a  mood,  but  the  dialectical  explication  of  an 
idea  which  seeks  to  cover  and  comprehend  the  whole  of  life. 
The  Pessimism  in  politics  which  is  known  to  us  as  Anarchy 
or  Nihilism  is  as  significant  of  the  close  of  the  nineteenth 
century  as  the  poetry  of  revolt  was  of  its  opening.  Nihilism 
does  not,  like  Socialism,  express  the  belief  that  there  is  an 
ideal  order  which  not  only  may  be,  but  which  ought  to  be, 
realized  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  expresses,  in  the  true  pessimistic 
vein,  the  precisely  opposite  belief — that  the  social  system  is 
so  bad  that  it  had  better  cease  to  be,  i.e.  that  society  should 
be  resolved  into  its  primitive  elements.  Socialism  may  be 
described  as  Utopian,  i.e.  it  is  a  form  of  ideal  Optimism,  the 
belief  that  though  the  best  of  all  possible  societies  has  not 
yet  existed,  it  may  be  made  to  exist ;  and  indeed  the  whole 
effort  of  human  society  and  the  sole  function  of  legislation  is 
to  turn  as  quickly  and  as  painlessly  as  may  be  practicable 
this  possible  best  into  a  beneficent  reality.  But  Nihilism 
springs  from  the  despair  of  beneficent  change,  and  simply 
proposes  the  total  abolition  of  things  as  they  are  without  any 
scheme  for  their  amelioration  or  any  suggestion  of  a  better 

J  o  o 

or  a  worthier  order.  It  is  instructive  to  note  the  conditions 
under  which  Nihilism  springs  up.  It  is  a  native  of  countries 
where  absolute  authority  reigns,  which  are  governed  by  a 
despotism  that  will  not  allow  free  speech,  or  the  distribution 
of  the  literature  that  may  educate  and  enlighten  the  mind,  or 
the  expression  of  the  opinion  that,  by  telling  of  social  dis- 
content,- reveals  its  causes  and  shows  how  it  may  be  changed 
into  contentment.  We  may  take  it  as  a  certain  law  of 
history  and  society  that  where  mind  feels  unable  to  modify 
the  system  under  which  it  lives,  it  will  seek  good  by  the 
dissolution  of  the  order  which  dooms  it  to  impotence.  The 
system  that  has  no  room  for  reason,  reason  can  neither 
respect  nor  spare.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  political  con- 
ditions where  speech  is  free,  where  combination  is  allowed 
and  where  the  main  factors  of  amelioration  are  in  the  hands 


NIHILISM   AND   SOCIALISM   CONTRASTED    117 

of  those  who  feel  the  hardships  of  life,  the  tendency  will 
be  to  seek  help  from  constructive  ideas  in  social  politics. 
Hence  in  free  countries  dissatisfaction  with  an  existing  order 
becomes  either,  if  political,  the  dream  of  a  broader  freedom  ; 
or,  if  economical,  the  dream  of  a  more  ideal  society,  where 
the  units  are  to  be  equal  in  wealth  and  in  well-being.  But 
Nihilism  expresses  the  awful  impotence  of  the  individual  in 
the  face  of  an  absolute  power  ;  while  Socialism  implies  the 
competence  of  those  who  have  power  to  change  the  existing 
system  from  one  that  works  to  the  benefit  of  a  class  or 
classes  into  one  that  works  for  the  equal  benefit  of  the  whole. 
The  significance  of  Nihilism  as  Pessimism  in  politics  for  our 
present  discussion  is  that  it  illustrates  the  conditions  which 
produce  the  pessimistic  mood,  and  make  inevitable  the  pessi- 
mistic idea.  Men  may  well  think  that  where  being  cannot 
be  improved,  even  when  it  works  disastrously,  it  is  better 
that  it  should  be  destroyed  than  continue  to  destroy. 

§   IV.     Eastern  and   Western  Pessimism 

I.  But  poetry  and  politics  are  here  only  incidental  and 
illustrative  ;  the  theme  that  concerns  us  is  philosophical 
Pessimism.  It  may  be  described  as  the  sense  of  evil  turned 
into  a  theory  of  being  and  formulated  in  a  law  for  the 
regulation  and  conduct  of  life.  Speaking  in  the  most  general 
terms,  we  may  say  that,  both  as  a  mood  and  as  a  philosophy, 
it  is  more  native  to  the  East  than  to  the  West.  In  the  East 
it  has  had  its  completest  expression  not  exactly  in  popular 
Buddhism,  which  is  too  ethical,  too  eclectic,  and  too  wishful  to 
help  where  it  pities  to  be  properly  described  as  pessimistic  ; 
but  in  philosophical  Buddhism,  the  speculative  theory  which 
may  have  been  at  the  root  of  the  Master's  mind  and  cer- 
tainlv  was  in  the  mind  of  his  disciples.  It  has  characteristic 
analogues  in  certain  types  of  Hindu  philosophy,  in  the 
fatalism  of  Islam,  and  in  at  least  one  of  the  great  sects  of 
China.  If  this  Pessimism  is  to  be  understood  in  its  basis 


nS  THE   PESSIMISM   OF   INDIA 

and  in  its  essence,  it  ought  to  be  studied  in  and  through  the 
conditions  which  created  what  we  have  termed  its  most 
perfect  expression — the  Philosophy  of  Buddhism. 

Let  us  distinctly  conceive  the  conditions  under  which  the 
system  arose.  It  stood  in  a  two-fold  antithesis  to  the 
speculative  tendencies  it  found  in  India,  even  though  it  was 
a  dialectical  evolution  from  them.  The  philosophy  that  made 
it  was  that  of  the  ascetic  communities,  or  the  forest  schools, 
where  men  cultivated  the  meditation  by  which  they  hoped  to 
escape  from  the  conditions  of  their  mortal  being.  In  these 
schools  there  was  a  kind  of  aristocracy  both  of  blood  and  of 
idea.  The  scholars  sprang  from  the  castes  of  the  twice  born, 
i.e.  they  were  men  of  Aryan  descent ;  and  the  ideas  on  which 
they  meditated  had  been  born  of  the  Aryan  mind,  and  were 
rooted  in  its  experience  and  history.  They  conceived  man 
as  an  emanation  from  the  great  abstract  Being  whom  they 
had  evolved  from  their  old  and  simple  theistic  beliefs.  This 
being  was  not  personal  and  masculine,  but  abstract  and 
neuter,  a  Substance  or  Essence  rather  than  a  God.  They 
called  him  now  Brahma,  now  Atman  or  Paramatman,  Soul 
or  Supreme  Soul,  now  the  One  or  the  That,  which  breathed 
breathless,1  within  whom  had  somehow  arisen  a  sort  of  dim 
desire  to  realize  himself,  whence  had  come  creation  and  all 
the  souls  of  men.  These  souls  were  like  so  many  atoms 
singly  and  collectively  imperishable,  each  capable  of  conver- 
sion, but  incapable  of  destruction  ;  all  issued  from  Brahma,  all 
were  destined  to  absorption  in  Brahma  ;  but  from  the  moment 
of  origin- to  the  moment  of  absorption — points  infinitely  re- 
mote from  each  other — there  ceaselessly  revolved  the  wheel 
of  existence,  and  they  with  it.  And  this  wheel,  to  which  all 
being  was  bound  and  with  which  all  moved,  carried  the  indi- 
vidualized soul,  or  the  separated  atom,  round  and  round  in 
cycles  and  epicycles  of  incalculable  change  till  the  supreme 
moment  arrived  when  he  could  escape  from  it  back  into  the 
1  Ktg  Veda,  bk.  x.  129. 


BUDDHA'S   ENVIRONMENT  119 

undiffercntiated  and  undistributed  Brahma.  In  one  age  he 
miiiht  be  born  a  man,  in  another  a  wild  beast  ravening  in  the 

o  '  *-* 

forest  ;  in  his  human  cycle  he  might  move  downward  from 
king  to  beggar,  or  upward  from  low-born  fool  and  sinner  to 
high-born  sage  and  saint,  or  he  might  fall  from  the  seraphic 
to  the  demoniac  state  ;  in  one  existence  he  might  live  like  a 
god,  in  another  he  might  be  humiliated  to  the  lowest  ranks  of 
the  brute  creation.  But  rest,  the  end  he  was  bound  ever  to 
seek  and  to  crave,  was  of  all  things  the  hardest  to  attain  ; 
and  here  the  cruel  and  inexorable  partiality  of  the  conditions 
which  regulated  these  changes  appeared.  They  were  made 
to  depend  on  acts  done  in  states  of  existence  prior  to  the 
one  in  which  the  man  for  the  time  found  himself — states  of 
which  he  had  no  recollection,  and  acts  whose  consequences 
he  bore,  but  whose  performance  lay  outside  his  consciousness. 
These  acts  were  the  thongs  which  bound  him  to  the  wheel  of 
existence  as  it  ceaselessly  revolved,  now  lifting  him  to  the 
summit,  now  plunging  him  to  the  depths,  but  never  allowing 
him  to  escape  from  the  life  which  was  destiny.  The  theory 
was,  therefore,  not  simply  metaphysical  or  philosophical,  but 
also  intensely  practical  because  applied,  in  the  most  ghastly 
way,  to  character  and  conduct.  It  had  been  worked  into  a 
social  order,  sanctioned  by  a  religious  system,  guarded  by 
ceremonies  and  sacerdotal  sanctions  of  the  most  ubiquitous 
and  imperious  kind.  The  misuse  of  ritual,  offences  against 
caste,  neglect  of  observances  belonging  to  the  ceremonial  of 
religion,  violation  of  the  customs,  order,  or  organization  of 
society,  might  have  effects  on  souls  living  here  that  could 
not  be  exhausted  by  ages  of  downward,  upward,  or  dubious 
change.  And  this  social  system  was  administered  by  men 
who  were  neighbours,  but  could  not  be  relations  ;  men  who 
as  priests  held  the  approaches  to  God,  and  in  right  of  their 
divine  descent  regulated  human  affairs  with  a  higher  authority 
than  belonged  to  kings.  And  as  Buddha  stood  face  to  face 
with  this  system  of  eternal  change,  conditioned  in  its  opera- 


120  IF  EXISTENCE   BE   SORROW 

tion,  in  its  good  or  ill,  by  external  acts,  he  said  :  "  What  is 
life  on  these  terms?  Can  it  be  called  a  good?  Is  it  not 
rather  a  misery?  And  can  there  be  any  benevolence  in 
continuing  an  existence  which  must  be  either  in  idea  or 
experience  miserable  ?  The  existence  which  possesses  such 
eternal  possibilities  of  sorrow,  nay,  such  dreadful  temporal  cer- 
tainties, canrot  be  good  ;  its  very  essence  is  evil ;  instability 
marks  it ;  birth  introduces  to  a  world  of  suffering ;  death 
is  departure  to  a  world  of  greater  suffering,  if  not  in  actual 
experience  at  least  in  possible  event.  And  where  the 
possibilities  of  evil  are  in  number  and  in  duration  so  nearly 
infinite,  can  existence  be  other  than  an  agony  to  him  who 
contemplates  it  with  a  serious  and  sober  eye  ? " 

Existence,  then,  seemed  to  Buddha  to  be  in  its  very  essence 
sorrow ;  sorrow  for  misery  that  either  had  been,  or  was  being, 
or  was  to  be,  endured,  whether  by  ourselves  or  by  others  or 
by  all  combined,  the  whole  creation  which  groaned  and 
travailed  in  pain  together.  Now  sorrow  is  not  good,  but 
where  it  is  inseparable  from  being  the  only  possible  escape 
from  sorrow  is  escape  from  existence.  But  how  can  we 
escape  it?  Buddha's  answer  sprang  out  of  the  philosophy 
which  he  had  learned  in  the  ascetic  communities,  but  its 
conclusion,  the  negation  in  which  it  ended,  was  due  to  the 
negation  from  which  he  started,  the  denial  of  Brahma  and 
of  the  soul  with  which  he  was  identified.  With  the  Hindu 
schools,  Buddha  said  :  "  If  wre  live  to-day,  it  is  because  we 
have  in  some  past  existence  accumulated  the  merit  that  calls 
for  reward,  or  the  demerit  that  cries  for  punishment.  Merit 
is  only  a  less  evil  than  demerit,  for  it  maintains  in  being,  and 
by  means  of  this  continuance  perpetuates  the  eternal  possi- 
bility of  some  downward  change  through  some  act  of  conscious 
or  unconscious  sin."  And  then  he  added:  "  in  order  to  escape 
from  being  we  must  escape  equally  from  merit  and  demerit ; 
but  to  do  this  we  cannot  live  among  men,  where  we  must  do 
the  things  which  entitle  to  penalty  or  reward.  We  must 


THE   ONLY  MENDING   IS   ENDING  121 

retire  from  the  world  and  cultivate  the  suppression  of  the 
very  desire  to.  live,  the  surrender  of  the  capability  to  act,  the 
quenching  of  the  thirst  that  by  goading  us  into  action  binds 
by  merit  or  demerit  to  the  wheel  of  life.  When  we  have 
ceased  to  desire,  we  shall  cease  to  will,  cease  to  act,  to  acquire, 
or  to  lose  merit.  The  law  that  maintains  being  and  enforces 
change  will  then  cease  to  operate,  and  released  from  the  ever 
revolvin"'  wheel,  we  shall  attain  Nirvana  and  return  no  more." 

o  * 

Buddha's  theory  was  pessimistic,  for  it  conceived  being  as 
sorrow,  and  the  discipline  he  enforced  was  a  method  for  the 
cessation  of  personal  existence  ;  but  it  was  a  pessimism  which 
could  be  so  justified  and  construed  as  to  be  translated  into 
its  contrary.  On  the  principles  which  he  assumed,  and  under 
the  conditions  in  which  he  lived,  it  may  almost  be  termed  an 
Optimism.  For  if  personal  being  is  an  endless  cycle  of  change, 
now  upward,  now  downward,  conditioned  on  acts  seldom 
ethical  and  still  more  seldom  evitable,  then  certainly  the 
noblest  conception  we  can  form  of  it  is  that  it  is  bad,  and  the 
most  benevolent  thing  we  can  propose  to  do  with  it  is  to 
abolish  it.  If  to  be  is  to  suffer,  if  to  continue  in  being  is 
to  be  confronted  with  the  eternal  possibility  of  ever  darker 
and  deeper  suffering,  then  being  is  a  thing  better  ended  than 
mended.  Buddhism  measured  by  the  purpose  of  Buddha, 
and  the  principles  which  were  the  assumed'  basis  of  all  his 
thought  and  of  the  thinking  of  all  India  in  his  clay,  is  only 
formally  pessimistic,  in  spirit  and  design  it  is  an  Optimism. 

2.  If  now  we  turn  from  India  and  Buddha  to  Europe  and 
Western  Pessimism,  we  shall  see  what  material  differences  lie 
within  their  formal  agreements. 

Pessimism  first  received  conscious  philosophical  expression 
in  the  West  at  the  hands  of  Schopenhauer,  who  was  born  in 
1788  and  died  in  I  S6o.  I  have  no  intention  to  enter  into 
any  details  of  biographical  criticism,  though  no  philosophy 
owes  more  to  its  author's  peculiar  psychology  or  more  faith- 
fully reflects  the  collision  of  the  forces  which  now  lifted  him 


122      PESSIMISM— EASTERN   AND   WESTERN 

to  heaven  and  now  cast  him  into  the  dust.  His  life  was 
rather  mean  and  sordid  than  noble,  the  life  of  a  man  who 
never  knew  how  to  live  in  harmony  and  peace  either  with 
himself  or  with  men,  who  quarrelled,  spitefully,  now  with  his 
mother,  now  with  his  sister,  now  with  his  publisher,  now  with 
his  landlady,  now  with  the  obscurest  and  least  reputable  of 
the  neighbours  about  him,  and  quarrelled  ever  in  the  meanest 
and  most  implacable  way.  It  is  too  undignified  a  life  to  be 
alluded  to  further  than  to  say  that  in  judging  a  system  we 
must  ever  remember  its  author's  personal  equation,  reckon 
with  his  character,  his  intellectual  and  ethical  qualities.  He 
had  moods  when  he  reverently  studied  "  Plato  the  divine  and 
the  marvellous  Kant,"  and  moods  when  his  hatred  of  Hegel 
broke  into  virulent  and  scurrilous  speech.  He  had  a  temper 
that  now  gloried  in  depicting  "  the  utter  despicability "  of 
mankind  in  general  and  great  men  in  particular,  and  now  so 
pitied  man  that  he  could  not  admire  the  beauty  of  nature 
for  thinking  of  the  human  suffering  hidden  within  it. 

Now,  though  this  peculiar  temper  and  mood  may  not  ex- 
plain his  philosophical  principles,  yet  they  help  to  explain  the 
use  to  which  he  turned  them,  the  spirit  he  breathed  into  them, 
and  the  form  they  assumed  in  his  hands.  So  far  as  his  system 
owes  its  being  to  external  causes  it  was  the  result  of  two 
tendencies — one  specifically  German,  the  other  distinctively 
Oriental.  The  German  tendency  supplied  his  thought  with 
its  philosophic  groundwork,  but  the  Oriental,  though  it  came 
from  an  East  ill  understood,  gave  the  impulse  that  built 
into  a  system  of  Pessimism  the  principles  he  had  inherited. 
He  had  philosophical  antecedents  in  Kant  and  in  Fichte  ; 
but  the  impetus  which  determined  the  direction  he  took  was 
given,  though  mediately,  by  Buddha.  His  thought  stood 
rooted  not  so  much  in  the  transcendental  as  in  the  practical 
dialectic  of  Kant  ;  or  rather,  to  be  more  accurate,  the  trans- 
cendental dialectic  gave  him  his  critical  idea,  but  the  practical 
suggested,  if  it  did  not  already  contain,  his  positive  doctrine. 


SCHOPENHAUER   A.\7D  BUDDHA  123 

He  learned  from  Kant's  speculative  system  to  affirm  the 
subjectivity  and  limitations  of  knowledge  ;  to  argue  that  the 
realities  of  science  and  vulgar  ex'perience  are  only  appear- 
ances, mere  ideas  of  the  mind,  and  that  if  we  are  to  find 
reality  we  must  seek  it  in  man  rather  than  in  nature.  And 
in  the  search  for  reality  Kant  was  again  his  guide,  though  it 
was  the  Kant  that  Fichte  had  made  known  rather  than  the 
Kant  of  Schelling  and  Hegel.  Fichte  started  from  the  ethical 
philosophy,  especially  the  idea  of  the  categorical  imperative 
and  the  freedom  that  was  necessary  to  it.  In  his  hands  the 
Ego  became  the  creative  idea  ;  it  not  only  organized  and 
constituted,  but  it  made  the  world.  The  categorical  impera- 
tive and  the  Will  that  obeyed  it  represented  the  ultimate 
reality,  the  law  that  fulfilled  itself  in  the  Ego,  and  became 
through  its  acts  and  by  its  means  the  divine  force  in  history 
and  religion,  the  true  moral  order  of  the  universe.  And  it 
is  significant,  as  indicating  an  unsuspected  unity  in  the  two 
main  sources  of  Schopenhauer's  system,  that  Fichte's  idea  of 
moral  order  as  deity  had  a  curious  kinship  with  Buddha's 
karma,  which  represented  the  inexorable  concatenation  of 
act  and  result,  merit  and  reward,  demerit  and  penalty.  Will 
thus,  as  the  Ego  in  action,  became  the  chief  factor  of  life, 
its  qualities,  and  the  order  within  which  it  was  lived  ;  in 
other  words,  it  was  the  Providence  that  governed  the  lives 
of  men.  Schopenhauer  took  this  idea,  and  made  Will  the 
supreme  reality  and  the  cause  of  existence  ;  by  it  being  was 
realized.  The  idea  is  the  object  which  exists  for  a  subject, 
things  as  perceived,  but  the  force  which  objectifies  is  the 
Will,  which  may  be  described  as  causation  interpreted  in  the 
terms  of  psychology  or  volition  rather  than  of  physics  or 
energy.  It  is  more  a  motived  than  a  mechanical  force  ;  it  is 
one  and  universal,  lies  outside  time  and  space,  yet  is  ever 
objectifying  itself  in  the  things  that  arise  therein.  As  indi- 
viduated in  man,  it  is  noumenal,  and  is  inseparable  from  the 
person,  distributed  through  the  whole  organism,  acts  in  it 


i24  POINTS   WHEREIN   THEY   AGREED 

and  through  it ;  the  organism  is  the  incorporated  Will.  It 
is  therefore  because  of  this  Will  that  we  live,  and  willing  is 
living  ;  we  create  life  by  willing  to  live.  This  function  of  the 
Will,  while  it  grew  out  of  Kant  as  interpreted  by  Fichte,  was 
the  correlative  of  Buddha's  Upadana,  or  the  grasping  at  exist- 
ence, which  is  the  cause  of  continued  being.  The  Will,  which 
was  the  essence  of  the  Ego,  became  thus  the  symbol  of  the 
universal  cause ;  it  was  the  root  alike  of  individual  and  of 
universal  life.  It  was  because  of  the  Will  to  be  that  we  had 
personal  being  ;  this  Will  was  indeed  unconscious,  it  acted 
with  purpose,  for  it  willed  to  live,  but  without  design.  It  held 
a  sort  of  reason  in  it,  for  all  will  is  reasonable,  and  so  could 
not  be  conceived  or  represented  as  force,  which  is  mechanical 
but  not  rational.  This  universal  Will  to  live,  as  everywhere 
distributed,  was  a  passion  for  being,  a  struggle  to  live,  a  yearn- 
ing towards  realization  ;  but  this  passion  was  blind,  save  in 
so  far  as  its  end  was  being,  and  the  maintenance  of  being. 
Schopenhauer  agreed  with  Spinoza  in  conceiving  thought  as 
essential  to  the  ultimate  Being,  though  the  thought  which 
was  to  Spinoza  an  attribute  of  his  infinite  Substance  was  to 
Schopenhauer  involved  in  his  rational  Will ;  but  he  differed 
from  Spinoza  in  recognizing  a  sort  of  teleology.  Spinoza's 
thought  was  conceived  in  the  terms  of  mechanics,  Schopen- 
hauer's in  the  terms  of  transcendental  metaphysic  ;  and  so  he 
could  never  accept  the  coarse  materialism  which  seemed  its 
only  alternative.  He  said,  "  I  am  a  metaphysician,  though 
I  do  riot  believe  in  metaphysics,"  and  he  turned  scornfully 
from  men  who  argued  as  if  organization  could  explain 
thought.  That  he  said  was  the  philosophy  of  the  barber's 
man  and  the  apothecary's  apprentice  ;  it  was  not  the  philo- 
sophy of  reason  which  conceived  that  since  thought  as  Will 
explained  organization,  it  was  incapable  of  explanation  by 
it.  Will,  as  he  conceived  it,  was  therefore  a  kind  of  reason- 
able though  unconscious  struggle  towards  being  and  towards 
its  continuance. 


AND   WHEREIN   THEY    DIFFERED  125 

But  the  existence  which  the  Will  struggled  to  realize  was 
misery  ;  it  was  sorrow.  He  said  that  if  creation  as  we  know 
it,  life  as  we  possess  or  undergo  it,  were  the  work  of  a  conscious 
creator,  then  he  was  the  greatest  of  all  wrong-doers.  He 
must  have  been  an  ill-advised  god,  who  could  make  no 
better  sport  than  to  change  himself  into  so  lean  and  hungry 
a  world.  Consciousness,  therefore,  he  denied  to  the  creator  ; 
the  existence  that  was  misery  could  not  have  been  designed, 
or  its  designer  would  have  been  guilty  of  an  unpardonable 
crime.  He  did  not  say,  imitating  the  phrase  but  reversing 
the  sense  of  Leibnitz,  "  This  is  the  worst  of  all  possible 
worlds  "  ;  but  he  said,  "  This  world  is  so  bad  that  no  world 
would  have  been  better  ;  it  is  something  that  had  better 
never  have  been."  What  then  was  to  be  done  with  it  ? 
Since  it  could  not  be  mended,  it  ought  to  be  ended  ;  since  the 
only  way  of  escape  from  sorrow  was  by  escaping  from  ex- 
istence, then  the  best  thing  to  do  was  to  make  this  escape. 
And  so  he  preached  a  doctrine  of  resignation  or  abdication 
of  will,  praised  the  action  by  which  man  gave  "  the  lie  to  his 
phenomenal  existence,"  and  suppressed  "  the  Will  to  live, 
the  kernel  and  inner  nature  of  that  world  which  is  recognized 

o 

as  full  of  misery,"  and  which  excites  in  us  when  we  really 
know  it  a  feeling  of  "  horror."  Men  were,  by  the  suppression 
of  the  personal,  to  suppress  the  universal  Will.  Since  all 
being  was  due  to  Will  and  the  world  was  as  we  willed,  it 
was  by  extinction  of  the  Will  that  extinction  of  being  was 
to  be  attained.  "Voluntary  and  complete  chastity  is  the 
first  step  in  asceticism  or  the  denial  of  the  Will  to  live."  l 

In  this  exposition  of  Schopenhauer  we  have  found  in  how 
remarkable  a  degree  he  repeated  or  echoed  Buddha  ;  but  it 
would  be  a  mistake  to  conclude  that  their  systems  were 
either  identical  or  parallel.  While  they  may  have  agreed  in 
certain  metaphysical  principles,  in  ethical  spirit  and  intention 

1  Die  ll'clt  uls  IVille  und  Vorstellung,  §  68,  p.  449.  English  Trans- 
lation, vol.  i.  491. 


126 

they  differed  absolutely.  Where  men  are  so  utterly  unlike 
their  thoughts  cannot  be  the  same.  The  heart  of  Buddha's 
Pessimism  was  pity ;  he  loved  man,  and  because  of  his  love  of 
man  he  hated  the  existence  that  was  sorrow.  The  heart  of 
Schopenhauer's  pessimism  was  more  contemptuous  than  piti- 
ful ;  his  scorn  was  not  so  much  for  life  as  for  the  men  who 
lived  it.  There  was  nothing  so  alien  to  Buddha  as  Cynicism, 
nothing  more  native  to  Schopenhauer.  The  Hindu  was 
moved  by  compassion  for  his  kind,  he  wished  to  strike  the 
fetters  from  off  the  enslaved  soul  ;  but  behind  the  thought 
of  the  German  was  a  colossal  vanity.  And  when  vanity 
measures  the  worth  of  men,  its  judgments  tend  to  be  as  falsely 
low  for  others  as  they  are  fabulously  high  for  self.  Then 
Buddha  was  a  rare  and  beautiful  personality — tender,  the 
ideal  of  all  that  was  attractive  and  gracious  to  his  people, 
who  did  not  so  much  believe  in  his  pessimistic  Nihilism  as 
in  his  ethical  transcendence  and  the  beneficence  of  his  will. 
It  was  as  the  ideal  of  human  grace,  the  realization  of  human 
loveliness  that  he  was  followed.  But  no  process  of  ideali- 
zation could  have  made  the  character  of  Schopenhauer 
admirable  ;  and  as  a  beautiful  mythology  could  not  gather 
round  him,  as  worship  of  himself  could  not  redeem  his  system 
from  its  native  hopelessness,  so  his  Pessimism  remains  an 
unadorned  abstraction,  appealing  to  the  intellect  without  any 
fascination  for  the  heart.  Buddha,  by  his  personal  transcend- 
ence, raised  his  system  into  a  religion  ;  but  Schopenhauer's 
personal  qualities  made  it  necessary  to  divorce  the  man  from 
his  thought,  which  became  therefore  a  matter  for  rational 
criticism  rather  than  imaginative  appreciation. 

But  perhaps  this  contrast  would  convey  a  false  idea  if  we 
did  not  add  that  Schopenhauer  was  not  without  disciples. 
He  indeed  lived  long  an  unbefriended  man,  for  he  was  a  man 
hard  to  befriend,  and  ceaseless  warfare  against  things  that 
commonly  awaken  enthusiasm  may  be  due  even  more  to  the 
unamiable  than  to  the  heroic  in  character,  and  the  unamiable 


THE  DISCIPLES  :   VON  HARTMANN  127 

is  never  an  attractive  man.  But  in  his  later  years  disciples 
began  to  gather  round  him  ;  and  though  his  system  never 
obtained,  like  the  old  transcendentalism,  the  sovereignty  of 
the  academic  chair,  yet  he  secured  from  men  who  loved  to 
apply  philosophy  to  life  recognition  and  even  acceptance. 

Von  Hartmann  is  the  best  known  of  his  disciples,  and  he 
has  attempted  at  once  to  qualify  and  to  develop  his  master's 
system.  He  has  attempted  so  to  unite  the  idea  of  intelligence 
with  that  of  unconscious  Will  as  to  be  a  speculative  theist, 
who  speaks  of  the  "  Unconscious  "  when  he  really  means  the 
"  Over-conscious."  He  is  penetrated,  as  his  master  was  not, 
with  the  idea  of  evolution,  though  he  has  criticised  its 
Darwinian  and  scientific  forms  in  very  drastic  terms  ;  and  he 
has  endeavoured  to  apply  it  at  once  to  history  and  religion. 
In  his  historical  theory  he  has  made  mankind  the  victim  of 
successive  illusions;  as  one  illusion  vanishes  another  comes, 
leaving  the  process  of  final  disillusionment,  as  its  supreme 
problem,  to  the  philosophy  which,  by  preaching  the  vanity  of 
human. expectations,  hopes  to  promote  the  beatitude  of  the 
future.  The  first  illusion,  belonging  to  the  childhood  of  the 
race,  was  the  dream  of  happiness  in  the  life  that  is,  which 
was  soon  discovered  to  be  a  vain  illusion.  It  was  followed 
by  the  dream  of  happiness  in  a  life  to  come.  That,  too,  has 
proved  empty  ;  and  in  its  place  there  came  the  dream  of 
happiness  for  the  race  in  another  age,  in  a  great  future  for 
humanity.  That  too  has  proved  an  illusion  ;  and  no\v  man, 
disillusioned  or  in  process  of  disillusionment,  has  before  him 
the  problem  of  how  to  bring  this  march  of  misery  consoled 
by  illusion  to  its  final  close,  when  misery  will  end  with  the 
ending  of  existence. 

3.  Xow  Pessimism  has  certainly  various  elements  of  worth. 
It  takes  a  serious  view  of  the  evils  of  life,  and  that  is  a 
matter  on  which  too  serious  a  view  is  hardly  possible.  There 
is  something  admirable  in  moral  passion  against  suffering, 
and  in  no  respect  do  we  more  feel  the  superficiality  of  a 


128  APPRECIATION   AND  CRITICISM 

thinker  like  Strauss  than  in  his  smart  but  unworthy  retort : 
"Von  Hartmann  says  that  this  world  is  so  bad  that  none 
would  have  been  better  ;  Von  Hartmann's  philosophy  is  part 
of  the  world;  and  as  such  it  is  so  bad  that  it  would  have 
been  better  if  it  had  never  been."  We  feel  the  question  to  be 
too  grave  to  be  so  lightly  handled  and  so  cavalierly  dis- 
missed. We  recognize,  too,  that  Schopenhauer  was  not  simply 
indulging  his  own  cynical  mood,  nor  imitating  in  the  West  the 
temper  and  the  speculations  of  the  distant  East,  but  repre- 
senting a  deep  underlying  tendency  of  the  time.  Our  idea  of 
the  necessity  of  things,  our  belief  in  physical  law  and  order, 
and  the  inexorable  connexion  between  cause  and  effect,  has 
seriously  affected  our  view  of  life  and  of  evil.  It  is  an  in- 
structive as  well  as  a  most  serious  and  significant  fact,  that 
the  more  a  merely  mechanical  notion  of  nature  and  of  man 
prevails,  the  less  hopeful  and  the  less  cheerful  becomes  the 
outlook  upon  life.  The  individual  is  lost  in  the  universal, 
and  in  losing  freedom  he  loses  the  power  to  contend  against 
circumstances,  and  becomes  the  mere  victim  of  chance.  If 
the  miseries  that  happen  to  us  must  be,  and  if  we  too 
must  be,  then  they  and  we  are  equally  integral  and  equally 
necessitated  parts  of  being  ;  amelioration  is  impossible  to  us, 
change  is  impossible  to  them,  and  what  remains  but  hate  for 
what  we  can  neither  avoid  nor  change?  If  in  the  midst  of 
this  necessity  man  is  conceived  as  only  the  highest  organism 
in  the  universal  struggle  for  existence,  then  there  is  added  a 
peculiar  element  of  pathos  to  the  situation  ;  for  in  a  nature 
where  only  the  strongest  survive  it  means  that  the  feeble 
have  no  function  save  that  of  perishing,  and  that  the  system 
under  which  we  live  reserves  all  its  mercies  for  strength  and 
cunning.  The  system  where  the  individual  is  nothing  and 
the  whole  is  all  in  all,  is  the  system  of  all  others  most  pro- 
vocative in  the  individual,  especially  when  he  is  at  once 
conscious  of  feebleness,  and  ambitious  of  pre-eminence  and 
strength,  of  the  most  pessimistic  theory.  In  other  words, 


OF  PESSIMISM:    GAIN  OR  LOSS?  129 

Pessimism  is  of  the  nature  of  a  philosophical  protest  against 
the  idea  that  an  unethical  force  can  be  the  sovereign  and 
ultimate  arbiter  of  ethical  existence,  personal  anci  social. 
And  in  making  this  protest  it  speaks  for  the  common  reason 
and  heart,  which  cannot  bear  to  be  the  tools  or  the  playthings 
of  an  unheeding  mechanical  energy.  But  where  Pessimism 
errs  is,  on  the  one  hand,  in  making  its  appeal  to  an  uncon- 
scious will,  and  in  assuming,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the 
creative  Will  has  done  its  last  and  best  with  existence.  For 
the  fact  that  evil  exists,  so  far  from  lessening,  really  augments 
the  need  of  an  ethical  Will  in  the  universe  to  contend  against 
it  and  in  behalf  of  good,  and  for  the  rescue  of  life  from  the 
dominion  of  sorrow  or  suffering.  Let  us  grant  that  evil  is, 
and  then  let  us  subtract  from  man  his  faith  in  God,  and  what 
have  we  gained — or  rather,  what  have  we  lost?  We  have 
lost,  first,  a  thing  that  is  above  all  others  needed  for  the 
amelioration  of  life,  to  wit,  hope.  Hope  cannot  live  if  the 
individual  feels  that  he  stands  possessed  of  a  being  that  is 
misery,  helpless,  in  the  face  of  a  mechanical  order,  to  which 
he  is  no  more  than  an  atom  or  an  aggregate  of  atoms,  or  in 
the  face  of  an  unconscious  creator,  to  whom  he  is  less  than 
nothing  and  vanity.  We  have  lost,  secondly,  the  faith 
through  which  hope  lives,  for  it  would  be  void  of  energy 
and  inspiration  were  it  without  the  belief  that  man  is  part  of 
a  system  which  incorporates  a  mighty  moral  Will,  able  by 
its  inexhaustible  power  of  initiative  to  work  towards  the 
higher  moral  ends.  When  he  stands  in  such  a  system,  he 
feels  that  he  can  help  to  create  the  conditions  of  amelioration, 
and  take  part  in  the  struggle  needed  to  secure  the  expulsion 
of  evil  from  the  realm  it  would  fain  rule.  And,  thirdly,  we 
have  lost  love  as  a  motive  to  service,  and  have  gotten  in 
exchange  the  emotion  of  pity,  which  is  more  beautiful  as  a 
feeling  than  strong  as  a  helper.  And  pit}-,  when  it  takes 
counsel  of  despair,  ceases  to  be  beautiful  and  becomes  either 
indignation  against  the  doer  of  the  wrong  it  cannot  redress, 
P.C.R.  Q 


130  VISION   OF   AN   INFINITE   VOID 

or  scorn  of  him,  or  it  grows  cynical  in  the  face  of  suffering, 
or  it  turns  sentimental,  shedding  tears  that  both  emasculate 
itself  and  exasperate  the  patient.  Pessimism  may  spring  from 
pity,  but  it  does  not  produce  philanthropy  or  benevolence  ; 
and  in  what  respect  does  a  will  that  is  not  goodwill 
differ  for  the  better  from  a  mechanical  energy  or  a  physical 
force  ? 

But  Pessimism  is  not  simply  ethically  unsuited  to  the 
temper  and  mood  of  the  time,  its  notion  of  being  is  un- 
satisfactory to  the  common  reason.  Existence  is  not  an  evil, 
though  evil  exists.  Life  is  not  simply  something  which  is 
capable  of  being  enjoyed,  but  something  capable  of  being 
improved,  and  the  greatest  of  all  pleasures  is  to  work  for  its 
improvement.  It  is  all  the  more  to  be  valued  that  it  is  not 
perfect,  only  capable  of  perfection.  The  normal  attitude  of 
man  to  life  has  something  infinitely  more  healthy  in  it  and 
truer  to  the  truth  of  things  than  the  attitude  of  the  man  who 
identifies  negative  evil  with  positive  good.  To  speak  of 
non-existence  as  better  than  existence,  or  to  speak  of  the 
world  as  so  bad  that  it  had  better  never  have  been,  is  to  say 
what  no  man  of  healthy  mind  can  be  got  in  the  heart  of  him 
or  in  his  higher  and  better  moments  to  believe.  Let  us  try 
to  give  the  notion  concrete  form,  and,  in  contrast  with  our 
sunlit,  star-filled  space,  to  imagine  an  infinite  void, — though 
the  very  attempt  to  imagine  it  will  prove  its  impossibility,  for 
non-entity  can  only  be  conceived  by  being  translated  into 
some  form  of  being.  Still  let  us  think  we  can  do  it,  and 
attempt  to  make  the  bold  essay  to  represent  in  our  fancy 
nothing  but  vacant  space  where  now  circle  the  worlds  that 
shine  to  each  other  as  stars — nothing  but  darkness,  no  sun- 
light to  make  the  day,  no  starlight  to  break  or  beautify  the 
night ;  nothing  but  death  where  now  there  is  life  ;  no  glad, 
s \vift-darting  fish  in  the  waters  of  river  or  sea  ;  no  river  or  sea 
for  them  to  be  glad  in  ;  no  green  earth  for  flocks  to  feed  on 
or  flocks  for  the  green  earth  ;  no  fragrant  and  lovely  flowers, 


EVIL   NOT   THE   ALL  OF   EXISTENCE         131 

no  laden  bees  to  hum,  no  lark  that,  like  a  blithe  spirit,  soars 
as  it  sings, — 

"  In  the  golden  lightning  of  the  sunken  sun, 
O'er  which  clouds  are  brightening, 
Thou  dost  float  and  run 
Like  an  unbodied  joy  whose  race  is  just  begun "j 

no  man  to  think  great  thoughts,  to  do  battle  for  the  true  and 
right ;  no  woman  to  love,  to  grow  strong  and  happy  by  loving ; 
no  race  to  weave  the  wreath  that  crowns  it  with  beauty  out 
of  the  pale  lilies  of  death  and  the  warm  red  roses  of  life  ; 
nothing  but  utter,  absolute  vacancy,  a  dismal,  dark,  dumb 
infinite,  where  now  lives  and  moves  and  abides  a  vivid  and 
vocal  and  reasonable  universe,  peopled  by  minds  that  look 
before  and  after,  and  read  in  things  visible  the  mysteries  and 
the  presence  of  the  Eternal  God.  And  then,  when  we  have 
fairly  envisaged  the  two  alternatives,  let  us  try  to  compare 
them, — if,  indeed,  a  glorious  reality  be  comparable  with  an 
irrational  impossibility, — and  let  us  ask  soberly,  whether  the 
negation  of  being  can  stand  in  thought  alongside  the  idea 
of  a  world  which  is  radiant  in  its  very  shadow,  and,  in  spite 
of  all  its  evil,  is  good,  because  capable  of  being  made  ever 
better?  What  the  answer  would  be  does  not  lie  open  to 
doubt  :  the  normal  man  loves  being  by  the  compulsion  of 
his  rational  nature,  and  not  simply  by  the  force  of  an 
irrational  Will  ;  and  it  is  not  his  own  existence  that  he 
loves, — did  it  stand  alone  he  would  hate  it, — but  he  loves 
being  as  a  whole,  for  as  a  whole  it  lives  in  him,  and  in  the 
whole  he  lives. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE   QUESTION   AS  AFFECTED    BY   THE   PROBLEM   OF   EVIL 

B.    SOME  SUGGESTIONS  TOWARDS  A  SOLUTION 

THE  criticisms  in  which  the  previous  chapter  concluded 
only  emphasize  the  philosophical  difficulties  that  beset 
Pessimism  ;  they  do  not  answer  the  intellectual  and  ethical 
difficulties  that  create  it.  The  belief  in  God  is  an  excellent 
thing  when  we  face  evil  as  something  to  be  vanquished  ;  but 
when  we  face  evil  as  something  to  be  explained,  the  belief 
is  itself  surrounded  with  serious  difficulties.  If  evil  is  such 
as,  if  not  to  justify  Pessimism,  yet  so  far  to  explain  it  as  to 
compel  us  to  say  that  it  is  not  without  reason  and  ought 
therefore  to  be  heard, — then  we  must  farther  admit  that 
the  higher  our  conception  of  God,  the  holier,  the  more 
benevolent,  we  conceive  Him  to  be,  the  greater  and  the 
graver  become  the  difficulties  concerned  with  the  creation 
and  government  of  the  world.  In  a  word,  we  are  faced  with 
the  venerable  problem — How  has  it  happened  that,  under  the 
rule  of  an  infinitely  good,  powerful,  righteous  Being,  evil  has 
come  into  existence  and  still  continues  to  exist  ?  This  is  a 
question  that  our  criticism  of  Pessimism  but  compels  us  the 
more  seriously  to  consider  and  to  discuss. 

§  I.     The  Limits  and  Terms  of  the  Discussion 

i.  Let  us  begin  then  our  attempt  at  suggesting  some  factors 
towards  the  solution  of  this  problem  by  frankly  expressing 
the  idea  which  gives  it  all  its  gravity  :  although  it  be  granted 


THE   RESPONSIBILITY   OF   GOD  133 

that  man  is  responsible  for  the  introduction  of  moral  evil 
(and  we  here  recognize  the  fact  that  many  would  refuse  to 
grant  so  much),  yet  we  must  conceive  the  Creator  as  respon- 
sible for  the  system  under  which  it  was  introduced,  which 
made  it  possible,  which  allowed  it  to  become  actual,  and 
which  now  follows  it  with  moral  penalties  and  physical 
sufferings.  We  ought  not  to  shrink  from  affirming  what  we 
have  called  the  responsibility  of  God  ;  we  do  not  think,  if  we 
may  reverently  so  speak,  that  He  Himself  would  deny  it  ; 
certainly  it  is  an  idea  that  lies  at  the  root  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, and  especially  of  its  doctrines  touching  redemption  and 
grace.  It  may,  indeed,  be  argued  that  responsibility  implies 
a  higher  authority,  a  judge  to  whom  we  must  give  an  account, 
and  whose  award  is  final  ;  but  this  is  a  juridical  rather  than 
an  ethical  view  of  the  matter.  The  tribunal  in  moral  respon- 
sibility is  personal  and  real,  but  in  legal  responsibility  it 
is  judicial  and  formal.  The  sovereign  is  as  responsible  to 
the  citizens  for  good  order  in  the  state  as  the  citizens  are 
responsible  to  the  judge  for  obedience  to  the  law.  The  father 
may  be  said  to  be  morally  responsible  to  his  family,  while  he 
is  legally  responsible  to  the  common  law  for  its  maintenance 
and  education  ;  but  the  two  responsibilities  are  neither  iden- 
tical nor  coincident,  the  moral  being  higher,  subtler,  more 
comprehensive,  and  imperious  than  the  legal,  asking  qualities 
of  character,  forethought,  prudence,  forbearance  and  courtesy, 
which  the  law  is  powerless  to  demand.  And  we  may,  with 
all  humility,  speak  in  somewhat  similar  language  of  God. 
The  older  theology,  with  its  emphasis  on  God's  indignation 
and  horror  at  sin,  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  a  thought 
which  affirms  His  responsibility  for  the  sinner.  The  guilt  of 
man  does  not  by  itself  justify  God,  for  the  order  under  which 
it  happened  He  instituted,  and  the  system  under  which  it 
continues  He  upholds.  Hence  the  vindication  of  God  must 
come  from  some  other  principle  than  His  hatred  of  the  evil 
which  theologians  define  as  the  violation  of  the  divine  law. 


134  EVIL   ACTIVE   AND   PASSIVE 

2.  We  recognize,  then,  that  we  are  here  concerned  with  a 
problem  which  gravely  affects  our  belief  in  the  goodness,  the 
wisdom,  and  the  justice  of  God  ;  and  that  it  were  better  to 
deny  His  existence  altogether  than  to  believe  Him  to  be 
less  than  infinitely  perfect.  We  acknowledge,  too,  that  the 
beauty  of  nature,  which  has  been  so  much  emphasized  and  so 
often  appealed  to  by  both  classical  and  Christian  theists,  is, 
for  many  reasons,  here  an  irrelevant  consideration  ;  for  it 
represents  only  one  side  of  nature,  and  that  the  least  obvious 
and  the  least  helpful  of  the  sides,  which  she  turns  to  the  vast 
multitudes  of  our  race.  Our  concern,  then,  is  with  evil,  which  is 
the  sad  and  tragic  fact  that  looks  out  at  us  from  man  every- 
where and  refuses  to  be  ignored.  It  may  be  said  to  be  of  two 
kinds — evil  that  may  be  suffered,  and  evil  that  may  be  done. 
The  evil  that  may  be  suffered  it  is  usual  to  term  physical  ; 
the  evil  that  may  be  done,  moral ;  and  though  it  is  impossible 
in  actual  experience  to  disjoin  them,  yet  it  will  be  better  that 
they  be  considered  apart.  They  belong,  indeed,  to  entirely 
distinct  categories  :  physical  evil  is  incidental,  occasional  or 
relative,  and  may  be  termed  negative  or  privative  ;  but  moral 
evil  is  positive,  and  may  be  termed  actual  or  real.  The 
phrase  "  physical  evil  "  is  not  indeed  used  as  the  equivalent 
of  "  bodily  suffering."  Were  it,  the  usage  would  raise  an 
even  vaster  question  than  the  one  we  are  attempting  to 
discuss,  viz.,  the  ethics  of  creation  as  regards  the  whole 
animal  kingdom,  where  the  animal  suffers  as  well  as  the  man, 
and  disease  and  death  reign,  and  the  strong  prey  upon  the 
weak,  and  ferocity  gluts  itself  with  the  blood  of  the  feeble 
and  inoffensive.  The  principles  that  underlie  and  guide  our 
discussion  may  apply  even  to  this  question,  but  the  applica- 
tion is  not  to  be  directly  made.  Our  question  concerns  man, 
for  in  him  the  physical  shades  into  the  moral  problem,  and 
ph vsical  evil  means  all  the  sufferings  he  may  have  to  endure, 
whether  bodily  or  mental,  nervous  or  sympathetic,  alike  as  a 
distinct  individual  and  a  social  unit,  alike  as  a  natural  bcin^, 


EXPERIENCE   NO   PAINLESS   PROCESS        135 

fleshly  and  mortal,  and  as  a  human  being,  sharing  in  the 
special  history,  of  a  people  and  in  the  collective  fortunes  and 
immortality  of  the  race. 

Taken  in  this  large  sense,  then,  physical  evil  may  be 
endured  or  suffered  either  by  an  innocent  or  by  a  guilty 
person,  and  its  being  and  function  may  be  in  both  cases, 
though  for  different  reasons,  equally  natural  and  necessary. 
To  acquire  experience  can  never  be  a  wholly  agreeable  or 
painless  process  ;  if  it  were,  the  experience  would  have  no 
educative  or  expansive  value.  If  happiness  consisted  in  being 
set  in  a  perennial  stream  of  agreeable  feelings,  it  would  soon 
become  the  most  wearisome  of  states  ;  for  into  a  state  of 
mere  enjoyment  there  would  soon  come  nauseous  monotony, 
which  would  be  fatal  to  ultimate  pleasure.  We  have  need 
here  to  clear  our  minds  of  cant,  and  to  recognize  frankly  that 
even  heaven  cannot  be  the  mere  synonym  of  the  agreeable, 
and  ought  not  to  be  conceived  as  if  it  were.  If  men  in 
beatitude  are  to  know  discipline,  they  must  put  forth  effort ; 
and  if  there  is  to  be  effort,  there  must  be  strain  ;  and  if  there 
is  to  be  strain,  there  must  be  emulation  ;  and  if  there  is  to 
be  emulation,  there  must  be  the  divine  rivalry  which  finds 
pleasure  in  excelling  and  in  the  endeavour  to  excel.  The 
man  who  has  thought  deeply  has  also  doubted  severely,  and 
doubted  not  merely  whether  there  be  a  God,  but  whether 
there  be  any  moral  good,  or  any  worth  in  any  being.  The 
state  of  doubt  may  have  meant  to  him  misery  or  even 
despair,  but  it  was  the  necessary  and  strictly  natural  though 
transitional  condition  of  a  man  realizing  at  once  the  limits, 
the  resources,  and  the  possibilities  of  his  own  intellectual  and 
m  >ral  being.  It  may  be  described  as  an  evil,  just  as  partial 
knowledge  is  an  evil  as  compared  with  omniscience  ;  but  it 
is  more  excellent  than  its  complete  negation  would  be  ;  for  a 
higher  beatitude  of  thought  is  realized  through  it  than  could 
be  realized  without  it.  What  may  thus  be  called  the  pain 
or  suffering  intrinsic  in  a  created  intellect  feeling  its  way 


136  CLASSES   OF   PHYSICAL   EVIL 

towards  the  Uncreated  Light,  may  stand  as  an  example 
of  evils  involved  in  the  very  terms  of  created  and  therefore 
limited  being,  but  so  involved  as  to  be  the  condition  of 
higher  good.  We  may  not,  then,  think  of  all  physical  evil 
as  either  calamitous  or  even  mischievous  in  character  and 
action  ;  whether  it  is  either  or  neither  will  depend  upon  its 
reason  or  cause,  upon  its  seat  and  tendency  :  nor  till  it  be 
viewed  in  relation  to  moral  evil  can  we  really  judge  whether 
it  be  positive  or  negative  in  its  nature,  a  real  or  a  privative 
thing,  the  suffering  that  simply  makes  sorrow  or  the  sense  of 
want  that  is  the  condition  of  all  activity  and  attainment. 

It  will  therefore  be  convenient,  for  the  purposes  of  our 
discussion,  that  we  should  deal  with  the  two  classes  of  evil 
as  distinct,  yet  as  essentially  related. 

A.    PHYSICAL  EVIL  :  ITS  KINDS  AND  FUNCTIONS 

We  may  divide  physical  evils  into  three  classes  :  I,  those 
that  arise  from  man's  relation  to  nature,  and  nature's  to  man : 
2,  those  that  are  native  to  his  own  being  :  3,  those  inflicted 
upon  him  by  men,  whether  ancestors  or  contemporaries. 

§  II.     Man  in  the  Hands  of  Nature 

i.  The  evils  that  arise  from  the  inter-relations  of  man  and 
nature  are  an  innumerable  multitude,  and  fall  into  a  variety 
of  classes,  (a)  There  are  those  wholly  due  to  the  destructive 
or  terrific  forces  of  Nature  herself.  They  may  be  represented 
by  the  storm,  the  hurricane,  and  the  earthquake.  These 
indeed  are  forces  that  work  appalling  disasters  ;  and  \ve  may 
not  forget  that  a  single  calamity  like  the  earthquake  at 
Lisbon  raised  more  painful  doubts  as  to  the  wisdom  and  the 
goodness  of  God  than  all  the  speculative  and  anti-Christian 
criticism  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

(/S)  There  is  the  class  of  evils  which  Nature  works  by 
failure  to  respond  to  the  labour  and  the  skill  of  man.  These 


BUT  NO   EVIL   PURELY   PHYSICAL          137 

may  be  represented  by  the  famine,  whether  caused  by  the 
drought  which  has  allowed  the  seed  to  die  in  the  ground,  or  by 
the  Hood  that  has  rotted  the  roots  of  the  grain  or  of  the  fruit 
which  man  has  been  patiently  waiting  for,  or  by  the  locust,  the 
caterpillar,  and  the  cankerworm,  which  devour  what  he  had 
painfully  been  rearing  for  food. 

(7)  The   third   class    may  be   represented   by   the  disaster 
which  Nature  brings  upon  man   through  the  destruction    of 
the  works  he  has  invented,  in  order  that   he  might  turn  her 
forces  to  his  own  service.     Here  is  the  storm  which  brings 
shipwreck,  the  tempest  that  lays  waste  his  cities,  the  lightning 
that  smites  his  proudest  buildings  into  ruin. 

(8)  We   may  find  a   fourth   class    in  the  evils   that  spring 
from  man's   neglect   of  Nature,  and  the   revenge  which   she 
takes   for   the    neglect.      Here  we    have    the    pestilence    and 
disease  in  its  hundred  forms  of  slow  or  swift  death. 

2.  But  it  is  hopeless  to  attempt  to  classify  the  infinite  forms 
of  the  suffering  which  Nature  inflicts  upon  man,  though  what 
has  been  sketched  is  enough  to  show  that  Nature  seldom  acts 
alone  ;  and  before  we  burden  her  with  the  blame  we  ought 
to  attempt  to  discover  how  far  Nature  or  how  far  man  is  the 
more  responsible  factor  of  the  evil.  The  two,  indeed,  are  so 
curiously  intermingled  that  we  may  say,  the  evils  accom- 
plished by  Nature  alone  are  but  few  ;  those  wrought  by 
Nature  and  man  in  conjunction  form  a  multitude  which  no 
man  can  number;  while  those  caused  by  man's  own  ignor- 
ance or  neglect  of  natural  forces  constitute  an  infinite,  a 
never-ending  series.  But  if  we  cannot  exhaustively  classify 
physical  evils,  and  trace  them  to  their  causes  in  Nature  alone 
or  in  man  alone,  or  in  the  two  combined,  we  may  say  certain 
things  concerning  their  functions. 

i.  The  natural  forces  that  now  and  then  work  so  disastrously 
for  man  are  among  his  most  beneficent  educators  ;  he  has 
to  study  them  that  he  may  master  them,  and  the  more  he 
studies  their  secret  the  greater  the  mastery  he  attains.  It  is 


138  NATURE   EDUCATES   MAN 

marvellous  what  limits  he  has  set  to  the  destructive  power  of 
Nature ;  and  in  setting  these  limits  he  has  learned  the  most 
beneficent  of  all  lessons — that  he  conquers  by  obedience,  and 
commands  by  obeying.  Nature  and  her  forces  must  be 
known  if  they  are  to  be  controlled  or  turned  into  servants. 
It  is  a  moral  lesson,  though  it  comes  in  a  physical  form.  Man 
acquires  the  wonderful  art  of  reaching  his  end  by  following 
a  way  that  is  not  his  own,  but  a  larger  and  better  way  than 
his.  The  educative  force  of  Nature  exceeds  our  capacity  to 
acquire.  We  have  all  learned  of  her  in  total  unconscious- 
ness more  than  we  have  learned  consciously  from  all  other 
teachers.  We  have  imitated  her  methods,  and  we  have  calcu- 
lated her  forces.  At  her  bidding  the  farmer  has  learned 
how  to  till  and  sow  and  reap ;  the  fisherman  how  to  ply  his 
craft  upon  the  great  waters  ;  the  mechanic  how  to  generate 
force  and  how  to  build  the  engine  to  use  the  force  he  has 
generated.  The  navigator  has  learned  from  stars  and  sun 
how  to  steer  his  ship,  and  has  compelled  the  currents  that 
run  through  the  .earth  so  to  point  the  hands  of  his  compass 
as  to  indicate  the  way  in  which  he  should  go  upon  the  sea. 
Study  of  Nature  has  thus  educated  man,  and  out  of  her 
school  he  has  issued  wiser  than  he  could  have  come  from 
the  hands  of  an  earth-mother  who  had  nothing  to  teach  him 
of  obedience  and  self-control. 

ii.  But  the  suffering  which  Nature  can  inflict  on  man  has 
helped  to  educate  him  even  more  in  humanity  than  in  the 
arts.  She  has,  so  to  speak,  by  her  very  inhumanity,  made  man 
humane.  The  awful  use  which  he  himself  can  make  of  her 
destructive  forces  for  his  own  ends,  is  putting  a  bit  and  a 
bridle  upon  his  more  brutal  powers,  his  lust  for  blood,  his 
love  of  battle  and  conquest.  But  still  more  has  it  taught 
him  to  see  that  the  men  who  suffer  at  Nature's  hands,  are 
men  he  is  bound  to  help.  The  shipwreck  calls  for  the  life- 
boat, and  the  hardy  men  who  stand  safe  on  shore  can  brave 
the  terror  of  the  storm  in  pity  for  those  who  are  threatened 


IN  ARTS  AND   IN   HUMANITY  139 

by  the  devouring  sea ;  the  famine  that  sends  gaunt  death 
into  the  homes  of  one  people  touches  another  with  pity,  and 
helps  to  create  among  those  who  are  alien  in  blood  and 
speech  the  feeling  of  kinship,  the  gracious  and  kindly  sense 
of  brotherhood.  In  the  darker  ages  pestilence  was  dreadful, 
for  it  roused,  by  the  fear  of  contagion  and  the  horror  of  death, 
the  fiercest  passions  that  can  burn  in  the  breast  of  man  ;  but 
the  more  men  have  penetrated  into  the  secrets  of  Nature, 
the  more  have  they  learned  their  community  of  interests,  and 
the  more  have  they  been  moved  by  a  feeling  which  has 
turned  into  the  passion  to  fight  disease,  even  though  they 
themselves  might  enjoy  immunity  from  it.  Nature  has  indeed 
been  here  a  great  educator  in  human  pity  and  helpfulness  ; 
the  very  suffering  she  has  inflicted  has  disciplined  man  in 
mercy.  The  time  was  when  natural  calamities  divided  men  ; 
the  time  is  now  when  calamities  evoke  the  sympathy  that 
hastens  to  help  ;  and  the  time  will  be  when  the  sympathy, 
anticipating  the  calamity,  will  restrict  its  reign,  reduce  its 
proportions,  and,  by  the  amelioration  of  Nature  and  the  lot 
of  man,  tend  if  not  to  eliminate  famine  and  pestilence 
from  his  life,  vet  to  lessen  all  their  attendant  miseries  and 
fears,  and  to  educe  at  the  same  time  those  higher  humanities 
which  had  otherwise  remained  latent  within  him. 

iii.  And  so  man,  in  the  presence  of  the  forces  that  seem 
in  Nature  to  dominate  his  life,  is  learning  to  organize  it 
on  a  higher  level  and  after  a  humancr  sort.  They  who  have 
learned  most  of  the  secrets  of  Nature,  especially  as  to  how  to 
keep  her  wholesome,  to  make  her  healthy  and  to  turn  her 
into  a  kindly  minister  to  man,  feel  themselves  compelled  to 
impart  the  secrets  they  have  learned  to  less  forward  or  less 
favoured  peoples.  It  is  a  curious  but  instructive  law  of 
human  progress  that  we  learn  by  the  evil  we  inflict  not  onlv 
to  cease  from  inflicting  it,  but  also  that  we  are  in  humam'tv 
akin  with  those  we  may  have  wronged.  The  people  who 
enslaved  the  negro  learned  through  the  penal  consequences 


140  NATURE   INEXORABLE 

that  followed  to  themselves  from  their  own  act  the  humanity 
of  the  men  they  had  enslaved.  We  slowly  discover  that  the 
secrets  of  Nature  are  not  the  property  of  the  men  who  dis- 
cover them,  but  of  the  whole  race.  Since  we  are  all  children 
of  the  one  mother  and  suckled  at  the  one  broad  bosom,  we 
come  to  feel  that  the  mysteries  of  the  motherhood  of  the 
earth  are  not  for  those  who  think  themselves  the  elder-born 
or  the  favoured  sons,  but  for  the  whole  brood,  the  collective 
human  family.  Our  common  dependence  upon  Nature  be- 
comes a  bond  of  unity  between  all  the  sections  of  mankind  ; 
the  life  we  live  is  one,  though  its  forms  and  modes  are  as 
multitudinous  as  the  units  of  the  race. 

iv.  But  experience  slowly  teaches  us  that  by  far  the 
larger  proportion  of  the  suffering  that  man  endures  at  the 
hands  of  Nature  is  not  due  to  Nature  at  all,  but  to  man.  It 
is  the  result  of  neglect,  of  improvidence,  of  carelessness  ;  it  is 
due  to  the  ten  thousand  causes  which  turn  things  preventible 
and  innocent  into  things  inevitable  and  injurious.  Nature 
exists  for  man,  not  man  for  Nature  ;  but  if  she  exists  for  him, 
it  is  to  teach  him  to  transcend  her,  to  make  him  ever  more  of 
a  man,  raising  each  generation  above  its  predecessor.  To  do 
this  she  must  awaken  the  energy  and  forethought  that  are  in 
him,  compel  him  to  study  that  he  may  know,  to  imitate  that 
he  may  prevail.  And  for  this  reason  Nature,  in  order  that 
she  may  be  beneficent,  must  be  inexorable  in  her  laws.  The 
greatest  calamity  that  could  happen  to  men  would  be  the 
grant  of  supernatural  aid  whenever  they  had  by  negligence  or 
ignorance,  or  any  act  of  wilfulness,  involved  themselves  in 
straits.  The  very  miracle  that  was  worked  to  stay  Nature 
in  a  destructive  course,  or  calm  her  in  a  tempestuous  mood, 
would  arrest  the  progress  and  the  amelioration  of  mankind  ; 
for  by  teaching  man  to  depend  upon  external  help  it  would 
take  from  him  the  desire  to  improve,  to  trust  his  own 
intelligence,  to  obey  the  law  of  his  own  conscience  and 
reason,  and  to  amend  by  effort  his  own  life  and  the  lives  of 


men.  If  the  stormy  sea  had  been  subdued  whenever  it 
threatened  to  engulf  him,  or  if  the  hurricane,  when  it  promised 
to  overwhelm  him,  had  been  softened  into  the  zephyr  that 
blows  gentle  and  sweet  upon  the  violet,  or  if  the  lightning  had 
been  arrested  in  its  swift  and  lurid  course  as  it  approached 
the  orbit  within  which  he  moved, — we  might  never  have  had 
any  dreadful  tales  of  shipwreck  or  other  disasters  of  the  deep  ; 
but  still  more  surely  we  should  never  have  had  the  marvellous 
engineering  and  the  brave  enterprize  which  have  built  the 
big  ships,  bidden  them  traverse  the  mighty  ocean,  and  turn 
its  once  dividing  waters  into  the  crowded  highway  of  the 
nations  across  which  they  carry  their  wealth  to  the  exchanges 
that  enrich  and  federate  mankind.  We  all  know  that  there 
is  nothing  so  fatal  to  the  manhood  of  a  people  as  the  charity 
that  pauperizes.  Were  we  so  to  relieve  the  improvident  as 
to  make  him  as  well  off  as  the  provident,  so  to  protect  the 
thoughtless  from  his  thoughtlessness  that  he  would  suffer 
as  little  as  the  thoughtful,  so  to  fill  the  squanderer's  hand, 
whenever  he  had  emptied  it,  that  he  would  know  less  ot 
want  than  the  industrious  and  the  careful — would  not  the 
result  be  to  set  the  highest  possible  premium  on  the  shiftless 
and  retrogressive  qualities  of  men  ?  And  so,  were  men, 
whenever  they  provoked  Nature,  or  challenged  her  to  use  her 
forces  to  destroy  them,  to  be  saved  from  the  consequences  of 
their  own  folly ;  were  they,  whenever  they  invited  calamity, 
to  be  miraculously  lifted  out  of  it,  they  would, — in  the  very 
degree  of  the  frequency  and  efficiency  with  which  the  super- 
natural power  interfered  on  their  behalf, — have  their  manhood 
injured.  Nature  must  be  faithful  to  herself  if  she  is  to  do 
her  best  for  man.  In  her  severity  lies  the  education  which 
is  the  last  thing  that  man  could  afford  to  lose. 

§    III.     Evils  peculiar  to  Afan 

I.   But  there  is   a  second   class   of   evils — those   native   to 
man's  own   bein<j — -which   are  also   an    infinite   multitude   in 


142  DEATH   MAN'S   TRAGEDY 

themselves,  while  dismal  and  distressing  in  their  causes, 
consequences,  and  incidents.  They  imply  man's  community 
with  Nature,  his  participation  in  the  ebb  and  in  the  flow  of  • 
her  life.  There  is  disease,  hunger,  thirst,  the  struggle  to  live 
in  the  face  of  a  hard  and  ruthless  order  ;  there  is  birth  in 
pain,  there  is  life  in  toil,  there  is  death  in  agony  or  despair. 
Indeed,  the  whole  of  the  evil  native  to  us  may  be  summed  up 
in  that  one  word,  mortality.  Here  is  man,  a  conscious  being, 
able  in  imagination  to  retrace  the  ages  behind  him,  to  look 
into  the  issues  of  the  life  around  him,  to  forecast  the  future 
when  there  shall  be  for  him  no  earth,  no  sea,  no  sky  ;  here 
he  is  a  creature  able  to  think  of  the  eternal  God  while  con- 
scious that  he  himself  is  only  mortal,  and  has  had  measured 
out  to  him  only  his  pitiful  threescore  years  and  ten.  Is  it  not 
a  shameful  and  a  painful  thing  to  be  doomed  to  so  brief  a 
life,  which  must  be  lived  under  conditions  so  narrow,  to  be 
like  a  steed  fit  for  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  yet  forced  to  bear 
the  dreary  drudgery  of  dragging  behind  him  the  tumbril  of 
death  ?  This  is  a  hard  matter  to  explain  ;  it  comes  so  near 
our  own  experience,  it  appeals  so  urgently  to  heart  and 
imagination  as  well  as  to  reason  ;  for  the  awful  cruelty  of 
death  lies  in  its  not  only  ending  one's  own  life,  but  in  so  often 
making  desolate  innocent  and  helpless  lives  that  would  other- 
wise be  happy.  If  it  were  one's  own  loss  only,  it  would  be 
possible  to  die  like  a  Stoic  without  a  murmur  and  without  a 
tear.  It  is  the  desolation  of  the  living  that  is  so  painful  to 
thought,  turning  death  into  the  sum  of  all  our  miseries.  But 
when  all  has  been  thought  and  said,  why  should  death  seem 
an  evil  ?  Birth  is  not,  and  surely  death  is  but  the  comple- 
ment and  counterpart  of  birth.  The  one  is  because  the  other 
is  ;  it  is  because  the  grave  is  never  full  that  the  cradle  is 
never  empty.  Then  how  without  death  could  man  realize 
the  meaning  of  life?  How  feel  the  immensity,  the  possibili- 
ties, the  god-like  qualities,  the  capability  of  endless  gain  or 
loss  contained  within  the  terms  of  his  own  being  ?  The 


THE   LEGEND  OF   JUBAL  143 

picture  of  man  before  and  after  he  knew  death  in  the 
<(  Legend  of  Jubal"  is  as  true  to  experience  as  to  imagination. 
In  the  old,  soft,  sweet  days  before  men  knew  death,  when 
all  that  was  known  of  it  was  the  single  black  spot  in  the 
memory  of  Cain,  his  descendants  lived  in  gladsome  idlesse  ; 
they  played,  they  sang,  they  loved,  they  danced,  in  a  life 
that  had  no  gravity  and  no  greatness  ;  but  when  the  second 
death  came,  and  men  saw  that  there  had  come  to  one  of 
their  own  race  a  sleep  from  which  there  was  no  awaking,  a 
new  meaning  stole  into  life.  The  horizon  which  limited  it 
defined  it,  and  made  it  great.  Time  took  a  new  value  ; 
affection,  by  growing  more  serious,  became  nobler ;  men 
thought  of  themselves  more  worthily  and  of  their  deeds  more 
truly  when  they  saw  that  a  night  came  when  no  man  could 
work.  Friends  and  families  lived  in  a  tenderer  light  when 
the  sun  was  known  to  shine  but  for  a  season  ;  earth  became 
lovelier  when  they  thought  the  place  which  knew  them  now 
would  soon  know  them  no  more.  The  limit  set  to  time  drove 
their  thoughts  out  towards  eternity.  The  idea  of  the  death, 
which  was  to  claim  them,  bade  them  live  in  earnest,  made 
them  feel  that  there  was  something  greater  than  play  ;  for 
death  hid  breathed  into  life  the  spirit  out  of  which  all  tragic 
and  all  lie/oic  things  come. 

Death  has  thus  added  to  the  pomp  and  the  fruitfulness,  to 
the  glory  and  the  grandeur  of  life.  Without  it  we  should 
have  had  no  struggle  of  will  against  destiny,  of  the  thought 
which  wanders  through  eternity  and  beats  itself  into  strength 
and  hope  against  the  bars  and  the  barriers  of  time  ;  without 
it  man  would  have  had  no  sense  of  his  kinship  with  the 
Infinite,  for  the  finite  would  have  been  enough  for  him. 
And  if  a  soul  made  for  eternity  were  to  be  withered  by  time, 
would  not  that,  in  another  and  darker  sense  than  attends  the 
end  of  our  mortal  being,  be  the  death  of  all  that  is  worthiest 
to  live?  And  has  not  time,  by  her  successive  generations, 
been  enriched,  enlarged,  made  varied  and  wealthv  as  she 


144  WHAT  LIFE   GAINS 

never  could  have  been  by  a  race  of  immortal  Adams,  un- 
changed and  deathless  ?  It  is  a  poor  and  a  pitiful  dream  to 
imagine  that  it  were  a  happier  than  a  mortal  state  were  man 
to  know  no  death,  but  to  endure  in  characterless  innocency, 
untouched  by  the  shadow  feared  of  man,  never  feeling  the 
light  within  made  resplendent  by  the  darkness  death  shed 
without.  Instead  of  a  single  generation  we  have  a  multitude 
of  successive  generations,  each  fuller  of  humanity  than  the 
one  which  went  before.  Instead  of  one  individual  we  have 
an  endless  series  of  mortal  persons  on  the  way  to  immortality, 
each  a  miniature  deity,  each  in  time  yet  destined  for  eternity, 
each  with  inexhaustible  potentialities  within  him,  each  real- 
izing himself  under  the  conditions  which  a  measured  existence 
affords,  and  all  contributing  to  make  the  wondrous  and  varied 
life  which  we  call  the  history  of  man.  Who  will  venture  to 
say  that  the  dream  of  an  innocent  Eden,  a  single  paradise 
of  immortals,  is  comparable  to  this  majestic  procession  of 
mortals  moving  as  to  the  music  of  a  celestial  dead  march 
through  time  towards  immortality? 

2.  As  to  the  desolation  that  comes  to  those  who  lose,  who 
would  dare  to  make  light  of  it  ?  Yet  must  we  not  recognize 
that  even  this  is  not  without  a  beneficence  of  its  own  ? 
The  thought  of  possible  loss  touches  with  tenderness  all 
the  relations  of  life.  It  explains  the  watchfulness  of  the 
mother,  the  ungrudging  labour  of  the  father,  the  solicitous 
care  of  the  wife,  the  affection  and  forethought  of  the 
husband.  Those  who  love  the  living  feel  life  to  be  all  the 
sweeter  and  dearer  because  it  is  so  transitory.  And  if  death 
brings  loss,  does  it  not  mean  that  before  creatures  could  be 
lost,  they  had  to  be  possessed  ?  Here,  let  us  say,  is  a  young 
man  full  of  promise.  He  had  been  a  bright  and  happy  boy, 
the  pride  of  his  mother's  heart,  the  light  of  his  father's 
eye  ;  he  had  been  an  earnest  student,  the  joy  of  his  tutors, 
the  hope  of  his  school  and  his  college,  raising  high  expec- 
tations even  in  the  withered  breast  of  his  professor.  He  had 


AND   WHAT   DEATH   GIVES  145 

been  the  centre  of  a  brilliant  circle  of  friends,  who  talked 
with  him,  walked  with  him,  disputed  and  argued  with  him 
concerning  high  things,  ever  stimulated  by  his  brilliant 
thought  and  vivid  speech.  And  he  comes  to  the  threshold 
of  life,  with  school  and  university  behind  him,  high  hopes  and 
fair  visions  before  him,  and  noble  purposes  looking  out  from 
his  radiant  face.  And  just  then  a  fatal  disease  claims  him 
as  its  own,  and  he  dies,  while  men  whose  hearts  are  dry  as 
summer  dust  linger  on  in  what  they  call  life.  Discipline 
had  been  gained,  weapons  mastered,  and  skill  acquired  ;  time 
and  opportunity  alone  were  needed  for  him  to  achieve  great 
things.  But  death  denied  him  what  he  needed  and  what  all 
men  desired  him  to  have.  And  was  not  the  act  ruthless,  and 
can  it  be  counted  anything  else  than  evil  ?  Was  not  a  good 
life  lost?  and  could  the  loss  be  anything  but  a  sore  grief  to 
some,  an  injury  to  many  and  a  calamity  to  all?  But  even 
here  there  is  another  side  to  be  looked  at  :  he  had  not 
lived  in  vain  ;  his  life  had  been  a  large  good.  For 
more  than  twenty  years  he  had  made  a  home  richer  than 
without  him  it  could  ever  have  been.  In  school  and 
college  he  had  made  ideals  realizable  that  apart  from  him 
would  never  have  been  dreamed  of,  and  by  doing  this 
did  he  not  enhance  in  the  men  he  touched  the  value  of 
life?  And  did  not  his  death  compel  them  to  feel  that  they 
must  live  his  life  as  well  as  their  own  ?  He  who  writes 
these  things  once  knew  a  man  who  was  to  him  companion, 
friend,  and  more  than  brother.  They  lived,  they  thought, 
they  argued  together  ;  together  they  walked  on  the  hillside 
and  by  the  sea  shore  ;  the}-  had  listened  to  the  wind  as  it 
soughed  through  the  trees,  and  to  the  multitudinous 
laughter  of  the  waves  as  they  broke  upon  the  beach  :  to- 
gether they  had  watched  the  purple  light  which  floated 
radiant  above  the  heather,  and  together  they  had  descended 
into  the  slums  of  a  great  city,  where  no  light  was  nor 
any  fragrance,  and  had  faced  the  worst  depravity  of  our 
r.c.R.  10 


146  MAN   AS  CAUSE   OF  SUFFERING 

kind.  Each  kept  hope  alive  in  the  other  and  stimulated 
him  to  high  endeavour  and  better  purpose  ;  but  though 
the  same  week  saw  the  two  friends  settled  in  chosen 
fields  of  labour,  the  one  settled  only  to  be  called  home, 
the  other  to  remain  and  work  his  tale  of  toil  until  his 
longer  day  be  done.  But  the  one  who  died  seemed 
to  leave  his  spirit  behind  in  the  breast  of  the  man  who 
survived  ;  and  he  has  lived  ever  since,  and  lives  still,  feeling 
as  if  the  soul  within  him  belonged  to  the  man  who 
died.  And  may  we  not  say,  this  experience  is  common 
and  interprets  the  experience  of  the  race  ?  Death  has  to 
be  viewed  not  as  a  matter  of  a  single  person,  but  of 
collective  man  ;  and  it  works  out  the  good  of  collective 
man  by  doing  no  injustice  to  the  individual,  but  rather 
using  him  to  fulfil  the  highest  function  it  is  granted  to 
mortal  men  to  perform.  So  let  us  say  that  however  men 
may  conceive  death,  it  belongs  to  those  sufferings  by  which 
mankind  learns  obedience,  and  is  made  perfect. 

§  IV.     Evils  Man  suffers  from  Men 

I.  The  third  class  of  physical  evils  are  the  sufferings  that 
are  inflicted  on  man  by  men.  These  are  indeed  infinitely 
vaster,  darker  and  more  terrible  than  the  sufferings  in- 
flicted on  him  by  Nature.  The  sufferings  caused  by  want 
of  heart,  by  want  of  thought,  by  ambition,  by  greed,  by 
passion,  by  pride  and  vanity,  by  neglect  and  presumption, 
by  all  the  lusts  that  ravin  and  devour,  are  in  number,  in 
kind,  in  intention,  and  in  effect,  the  transcendent  sufferings 
of  the  world.  And  while  they  may  be  physical  in  form 
they  are  almost  uniformly  ethical  in  source,  and  also  in 
their  consequences.  It  were  vain  to  attempt  to  classify 
evils  so  infinitely  varied  in  character  and  in  quality,  but 
their  types  may  be  determined  according  to  their  more 
common  sources,  (i)  There  are  evils  that  spring  from  the 
constitution  of  the  race,  the  law  of  descent  and  inheritance 


THE   LAW   OF   HEREDITY  147 

(2)  Evils  that  come  through  the  very  affections  that 
create  the  home  and  the  family,  which  includes  the  prob- 
lems raised  by  the  nature  and  relations  of  the  sexes.  (3) 
Evils  that  spring  from  the  social  constitution  and  civil 
relations  of  man,  or  man  as  organized  into  communities 
and  classes,  into  nations  and  states.  (4)  Evils  that  spring 
from  economical  or  industrial  causes,  from  man  as  a  being 
that  must  work  in  order  that  he  may  live.  (5)  Evils  that 
come  from  international  rivalries,  the  jealousies,  conflicts, 
and  collisions  now  of  uncivilized  tribes,  and  now  of  colossal 
civilized  powers. 

With  only  certain  of  these  evils,  those  which,  as  involved  in 
the  very  constitution  of  the  race,  raise  grave  questions  as  to 
the  power  and  wisdom  of  the  Creator,  are  we  here  specially 
concerned,  though  we  may  later  have  to  deal  in  more  detail 
with  others.  The  law  of  heredity  is  a  serious  problem  for 
any  one  who  regards  Nature  as  moral  in  source  and  in 
purp  )se.  How  has  it  happened  that  a  wise  and  beneficent 
Creator  so  constituted  the  race  as  to  place  in  the  hands  of 
individuals  enormous  powers  which  they  are,  from  the  very 
necessity  of  the  case,  totally  unfit  to  exercise  ?  How  is  it 
that  He  has  wedded  together  the  purest  affection  with  the 
basest  passion,  and  made  it  possible  for  man  to  feel  and 
act  like  a  brute  to  one  who  feels  and  acts  like  an  angel? 
And  how  is  it  that  He  has  so  formed  the  highest  of  all  His 
•creatures  that  this  brutish  person  may  not  only  sacrifice  to 
his  lusts  the  chastity  of  the  living  but  also  destroy  the  virtue, 
the  happiness,  and  the  health  of  the  unborn?  Does  it  not 
argue  some  signal  ethical  incapacity  or  moral  indifference  in 
the  Creator  first  to  create  natures  in  which  the  angel  and  the 
devil  so  intermix,  and  then  to  endow  them,  even  when  they 
are  most  demoniac,  with  such  power  to  control  the  plastic 
and  productive  forces  of  life? 

2.  Xow,  while  we  ouglit  to  distinguish  in  this  problem 
the  elements  which  concern  man  from  those  which  concern 


148  MAN   AS   SOCIAL   ORGANISM 

Providence,  yet  it  is  necessary  to  see  how  intimately  arid 
inextricably  they  are  interrelated.  So  far  as  man  is  a 
factor  of  evil,  especially  in  those  functions  which  involve 
the  good  of  posterity,  it  is  evident  that  we  judge  him  not 
as  if  he  were  a  mere  natural  being,  but  as  one  who  stands 
in  a  higher  order,  who  has  duties  he  ought  to  fulfil,  and 
duties  which  may  forbid  him  to  indulge  his  natural  in- 
stincts. That  the  constitution  of  the  man  is  what  it  is, 
and  that  man  has  sexual  and  sensual  passions  which 
impel  towards  licentious  living,  is  not  allowed,  then,  to 
extenuate  the  evil  he  may  do.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  held 
bound  to  obey  a  law  which  would  turn  Nature's  way  in 
his  hands  into  an  instrument  of  immense  good  ;  and,  if  he 
neglects  it,  he  is  charged  with  guilt  odious  in  the  degree 
that  he  has  made  Nature  the  partner  and  servant  of  his 
offence.  Now  this  means  that  we  conceive  Nature  to  be 
good  in  herself,  evil  only  when  she  falls  into  evil  hands, 
and  is  made  a  minister  of  sin  ;  that  her  Author  designed 
her,  as  appears  from  the  higher  law  under  which  man 
lives,  to  serve  moral  ends  by  being  in  the  service  of  moral 
beings.  But  we  cannot  so  think  without  being  forced  to 
go  much  farther.  Nothing  has  contributed  more  to  the 
moral  education  of  the  race  than  its  physical  constitution  ; 
through  it  the  feeling  of  responsibility  and  obligation  in 
the  individual  to  the  whole  has  been  evoked  and  defined. 
The  sense  of  the  harm  man  could  do  to  man  has  possessed 
the  individual  conscience  with  fear,  and  has  armed  the  social 
conscience  with  all  its  sanctions  and  almost  all  its  terrors. 
The  knowledge  of  the  power  for  mischief  incarnated  in  a 
reckless  man,  has  made  society  surround  him  with  restraints  ; 
and  the  appeal  of  the  silent  unborn  generations  to  the  latent 
fatherhood  in  man,  has  induced  him  to  bind  himself  about 
with  the  obligations  that  help  to  make  and  to  keep  him 
moral.  Growth  in  civilization  may  be  measured  by  the 
limitations  progressively  laid  upon  man's  power  to  harm  man, 


A   LESSON   IN   RESPONSIBILITY  149 

just  as  growth  in  religion  is  marked  by  his  increased  will  to 
help.  Law  is  meant  for  the  lawless  and  disobedient,  and  in 
it  we  may  see  expressed  man's  feeling  that  the  order  of  the 
race  is  rooted  in  justice  and  that  its  life  ought  to  be  regulated 
by  duty.  And  could  we  conceive  what  Nature  would  be  in 
the  hands  of  a  wholly  moralized  mankind  ?  The  constitution 
which  now  works  in  a  way  so  mixed  of  good  and  evil,  would 
then  work  wholly  for  good.  The  law  which  now  transmits 
so  much  misery  and  disease  and  vice  from  parent  to  child, 
would  then  bequeath  virtue  and  truth.  The  inheritance  of 
the  race  would  be  a  cumulative  good  ;  it  would  represent 
the  stores  of  health  and  sanity,  wisdom  and  knowledge, 
acquired  in  one  generation  and  transmitted  to  its  successor  in 
order  that  they  might  be  made  into  a  worthier  and  richer 
heritage  for  those  who  were  to  follow  after.  We  are  not  to 
judge  what  is  as  if  it  were  the  ideal  and  the  eternal.  It  is 
neither,  but  it  has  been  designed  for  both  ;  and  though  evil 
may  use  for  its  own  ends  what  was  designed  for  good,  yet 
good  will  reclaim  its  own  and  reign  the  more  securely  that 
reason  has  learned  through  experience  that  Nature  is  holy 
and  just. 

In  this  discussion  we  have  tried  to  deal  with  the  ques- 
tion as  it  affects  the  system  under  which  we  live  here  and 
now  ;  yet  at  no  moment  have  we  thought  of  man  as  if 
this  life  were  the  whole  of  him.  If  it  is  a  poor  philosophy 
which  calls  in  the  rewards  and  penalties  of  another  life  to 
redress  the  wrongs  caused  by  the  unequal  distribution  of 
pleasure  and  pain  in  this,  yet  no  argument  which  attempts 
to  justifv  the  ways  of  God  to  men  can  afford  to  forget  the 
full  measure  and  duration  of  God's  relations  to  man.  Time 
and  Kternity  are  one  ;  he  who  is  and  he  who  is  to  be  are 
one  and  the  same  person  ;  and  his  life,  its  meaning,  purpose, 
discipline,  can  never  be  understood  if  he  be  regarded  as  a 
mere  mortal  being,  with  no  existence  save  what  begins  with 


150  EVIL   MAY   DISCIPLINE 

birth  and  ends  at  death.  The  scale  on  which  an  immortal 
being  is  planned  is  not  commensurate  with  any  measure  of 
mortality  ;  and  what  to  a  mortal  might  well  seern  unmiti- 
gated evil  may  appear  to  the  immortal  only  a  discipline  the 
better  qualifying  him  for  his  immortality.  We  might  well 
imagine  that  were  his  mortal  life  to  be  his  whole  and  sole 
existence,  then  it  ought  to  be  like  a  sweet  pastoral  melody  ; 
bat  an  immortal  life  is  so  vast  that  the  prelude  to  it  may 
fitly  reach  the  proportions  of  a  mighty  epic,  or  be  distin- 
guished by  the  tragic  situations  that  beseem  an  immense 
drama. 

B.    MORAL  EVIL:  ITS  NATURE,  ORIGIN,  AND 
CONTINUANCE 

In  the  course  of  this  discussion  it  has  become  evident  that 
the  two  classes  of  evil  so  shade  into  each  other  that  it  is 
impossible  to  draw 'a  clear  boundary  line  between  them,  and 
say,  "  On  this  side  moral  evil  lies,  and  on  that  side  physical." 
As  a  matter  of  fact  they  are  inextricably  interwoven.  Sin 
determines  an  infinite  number  and  variety  of  the  forms 
which  suffering  assumes,  whether  as  regards  action,  quality, 
character,  tendency,  or  function.  Yet,  vague  as  it  is,  in  the 
last  analysis  the  distinction  holds  ;  physical  evil  is  the  evil 
men  suffer,  moral  evil  is  the  evil  they  do.  The  one  falls 
under  the  categories  of  choice  and  action,  the  other  under 
those  of  result  and  consequences.  And  this  means  that 
moral  evil  is  due  to  the  act  of  the  personal  will,  but  physical 
is  conditioned  by  the  operation  of  fixed  laws,  or  an  estab- 
lished order.  The  moment  the  will  has  chosen,  the  fixed  law 
begins  to  operate  ;  and  so,  though  the  act  may  be  transient, 
the  consequences  are  permanent.  In  its  essence  the  act 
creative  of  moral  evil  is,  to  use  a  juridical  phrase,  "a  violation 
of  law";  to  speak  with  the  Stoics,  it  is  a  refusal  to  "live 
according  to  nature"  ;  to  employ  the  language  of  Butler,  it  is 


BUT   IS  NOT   DISCIPLINARY  151 

the  failure  to  recognize  "the  authority  of  conscience,"  or  in  that 
of  Kant,  it  is'to  decline  to  obey  "  the  categorical  imperative." 
In  these  cases  "  law,"  "  nature,"  "  conscience,"  "  categorical 
imperative,"  are  but  impersonal  names  for  the  ethical 
sovereignty  of  God  ;  and  the  denial  of  this  sovereignty  means 
the  alienation  in  will  and  character  of  man  from  his  Maker. 
It  is  this  denial  and  consequent  alienation  that  creates  and 
constitutes  moral  evil  in  its  two  ultimate  forms,  act  and 
character,  or  choice  and  habit,  or  will  and  nature. 

On  account  then  of  the  origin  and  essential  quality  of 
moral  evil  as  the  revolt  of  the  personal  will  against  the 
sovereignty  under  which  it  was  constituted  to  live,  we  cannot 
describe  it  as  disciplinary ;  but  only  as  absolute  and  un- 
relieved evil.  It  is  bad  as  seen  in  the  individual  ;  it  mars 
the  god-like  beauty  which  is  native  to  the  soul  ;  it  steals 
away  the  charm  which  made  it  seem  to  the  eye  of  its 
Maker  very  good  ;  it  isolates  it  from  the  source  of  life  ;  it 
removes  it  from  the  breast  of  the  Almighty  who  breathed 
it  into  being.  It  grows  by  what  it  feeds  on,  for  in  sinning 
there  is  no  cure  of  sin,  there  is  only  increase  of  the  evil. 
But  if  it  be  bad  in  the  individual,  it  is  worse  when  incor- 
porated in  families  and  turned  into  a  sort  of  inheritance  ;  and 
worst  of  all  when  it  possesses  and  dominates  the  collective 
race.  And  so  far  from  dying  as  civilization  advances,  it 
grows  subtler  the  more  civilized  the  race  becomes.  The 
man  who  is  naked  and  unashamed  is  not  depraved  by  his 
nakedness  ;  it  is  the  knowledge  that  he  ought  to  be  clothed 
which  begets  shame,  and  it  is  shame  that  begets  depravity. 
Unconscious  sin  does  not  brutalize,  it  is  conscious  sin  which 
corrupts  the  nature  and  wastes  the  whole  man.  And  what 
is  growth  in  civilization  but  increase  of  the  knowledge  that 
makes  us  conscious  of  sin  ?  And  so  our  modern  citv  is 
depraved  in  a  sense  that  no  primitive  community  ever  was. 
There  is  more  hope  of  the  conversion  of  the  unclothed 
savage  than  of  the  clothed  and  skilled  and  inured  wrongdoer 


of  our  East-end  dens  or  of  our  West-end  clubs.  Hence  out 
of  both  our  personal  and  our  collective  experience  comes  the 
problem — How  is  it  that  the  Creator  has  allowed  all  the  fair 
promise  and  all  the  divine  potentiality  of  man  to  be  falsified 
by  the  rise  of  sin  and  the  cumulative  wickedness  of  all  the 
generations  of  men  ? 

There  are,  then,  two  main  questions  to  be  discussed,  one 
as  to  the  origin  or  introduction  of  moral  evil,  the  other  as  to 
its  continuance  and  consequent  diffusion. 

§  V.     Moral  Evil  and  God 

As  to  the  origin  or  introduction  of  moral  evil  it  may  be 
argued  : — "  Man  has  indeed  done  evil,  and  may,  in  a  sense, 
be  described  as  its  author,  but  this  does  not  exonerate  God. 
For  man  could  not  have  sinned  unless  he  had  been  made 
capable  of  sinning.  Why  was  he  so  made  ?  And  having 
been  so  made,  why  was  he  not  so  watched  and  superintended 
as  to  make  this  evil  deed  of  his  impossible?  To  say  that  he 
did  it  is  but  to  saddle  him  with  the  secondary  responsibility  ; 
the  primary  responsibility  is  the  Creator's,  who  so  made  man 
that  he  could  do  this  thing,  and  so  neglected  and  forsook 
him  at  the  critical  moment  as  to  leave  him  no  choice  but  to 
follow  his  inclinations  and  hasten  to  do  it."  The  answer 
to  this  argument  will  compel  us  to  enter  a  more  speculative 
region  than  any  we  have  as  yet  attempted  to  penetrate. 
For  the  question,  why  God  permitted  moral  evil,  or  rather, 
why  He  made  man  capable  of  doing  it,  requires,  before  it 
can  become  either  intelligible  or  soluble,  the  exposition  and 
analysis  of  certain  underlying  and  regulative  ideas.  These 
relate,  chiefly,  to  our  modes  of  conceiving  the  Deity  and  the 
creation  in  themselves  and  in  their  mutual  relations. 

I.  Well,  then,  it  is  not  possible  to  think  of  the  Creator 
under  the  categories  of  an  abstract  Absolute  or  an  isolated 
Perfection.  We  must,  if  we  think  of  Him  in  relation  to  the 
universe,  bring  Him  more  or  less  under  the  conditions  of  a 


EVIL  BECOMES  THE   CONCERN   OF   GOD     153 

related  being,  one  to  whom  space  and  time  are  not  abstract 
forms  of  thought,  but  modes  of  activity  and  terms  of  real 
existence.  For  Deity  as  Creator  is  not  a  mere  Abstraction, 
an  unconditioned  Absolute  ;  but  He  acts  and  He  produces, 
and  to  act  is  to  be  conditioned,  and  to  produce  is  to  be 
related.  Now  conditions,  as  they  affect  action,  are  of  two 
kinds,  external  and  internal. 

i.  External  conditions  are  such  as  these — impossibilities 
must  exist  to  God  as  well  as  to  men  ;  possible  things 
Omnipotence  may  achieve,  impossible  things  not  even 
Omnipotence  can  accomplish.  To  be  Almighty  is  not  to  be 
able  to  perform  what  is,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  incapable 
of  performance  ;  and  this  inability  does  not  in  any  respect 
limit  the  might,  it  only  helps  to  define  its  province.  These 
inabilities  or  impossibilities  may  be  said  to  be  of  three  kinds  : 
physical,  intellectual  and  moral.  The  moral  inability  may  be 
stated  in  the  familiar  phrase  :  "  It  is  impossible  for  God  to  lie." 
The  intellectual  may  be  represented  either  under  the  category 
of  thought :  It  is  impossible  for  God  to  conceive  the  false  as 
if  it  were  the  true  ;  or  under  the  category  of  knowledge  :  It  is 
impossible  for  God  to  know  things  that  are  not  as  if  they 
were  real  things.  The  physical  impossibility  may  be  ex- 
pressed in  various  forms  :  It  is  not  open  even  to  God  to 
make  a  part  equal  to  the  whole  ;  to  make  the  same  thing 
both  be  and  not  be  ;  to  make  a  circle  at  once  a  circle  and  a 
square,  or  to  make  a  square  out  of  two  straight  lines.  Or,  to 
express  the  same  inability  in  a  different  form,  we  may  say: 
God  could  not  make  another  God  infinite  like  Himself,  for 
two  infinities  could  not  co-exist ;  nor  could  He  create  a  being 
who  should  start  as  if  he  had  a  long  experience  behind  him 
or  an  acquired  character  within  him.  He  could  only  make  a 
being  capable  of  gaining  experience  and  reali/ing  character. 
The  power  of  making  monstrosities  is  not  divine,  and  God, 
even  where  most  god-like,  will  be  conditioned  by  the  very 
terms  of  the  work  He  seeks  to  do.  As  the  most  rational 


154        WHETHER  GOD  BE   UNCONDITIONED 

and  the  most  moral  of  beings,  all  His  acts  will  be  reasonable 
and  all  His  ends  moral. 

ii.  But  the  internal  conditions  are  even  more  determinative 
of  the  scope,  the  quality,  and  the  purpose  of  the  Divine 
action  than  the  external.  Omnipotence  is  not  the  synonym 
of  God  ;  if  He  is  perfect,  He  must  not  be  conceived  simply 
under  the  category  of  an  Almighty  Will.  If  He  be  conceived 
simply  as  substance,  or  as  a  mere  Ens  Infinitum,  then  we 
may,  with  Spinoza,  reduce  His  attributes  to  two — extension,, 
which  denotes  His  behaviour  in  space,  and  thought,  which 
describes  His  action  in  time  ;  or  if  we  conceive  Him,  with 
Schopenhauer,  purely  as  unconscious  Will,  then  we  may  ex- 
press His  activity  in  terms  which  have  no  more  rational  value 
or  moral  significance  than  matter,  motion,  and  force.  But  if 
we  conceive  God  as  a  Subject,  i.e.  as  a  conscious  centre  of 
thought  and  volition,  then,  in  the  very  degree  that  we  think  of 
Him  as  infinite,  we  must  interpret  His  attributes  and  action 
under  the  categories  of  moral  reason  and  ethical  will.  And 
this  means  that  in  our  conception  of  God  the  qualities  of  will 
and  potency  are  secondary  and  determined,  the  qualities  of 
goodness  and  truth  are  primary  and  determinative.  The 
Deity  is  not  divine  to  us  because  He  is  almighty, — for  an 
omnipotent  devil  could  never  be  the  god  of  any  moral 
being  ;  but  because  we  conceive  Him  as  the  impersonated 
ideal  of  the  Absolute  Good.  And  this  signifies  that  we  re- 
gard the  external  attributes,  i.e.  those  which  are  physical  and 
pertain  to  the  maintenance  of  physical  relations  and  the 
exercise  of  physical  energies,  as  less  divine  than  those  that 
denote  ethical  qualities,  and  the  exercise  of  spiritual  and 
intellectual  power.  Wisdom  is  more  and  greater  than 
omniscience  ;  righteousness  is  more  and  higher  than  omni- 
presence ;  love  is  vaster  and  diviner  than  omnipotence.  Now 
we  can  only  conceive  an  absolutely  Perfect  Being  as  one 
whose  whole  nature  is  harmonious  in  all  its  actions  and  ac- 
tivities ;  for  might  without  love  were  mere  violence  ;  presence 


HIS   MIGHT  SERVES   HIS   LOVE  155 

without  righteousness  were  only  energy  ;  omniscience  with- 
out wisdom  Were  but  intellectual  perception, — the  reflection 
of  things  in  a  mirror  which  had  the  quality  of  being  con- 
scious of  the  things  it  reflected.  But  if  we  so  conceive  the 
Divine  Perfection,  then  all  the  physical  attributes  will  be 
under  the  control  of  the  ethical,  and  must  be  conceived  as 
only  means,  while  the  others  denote  sovereign  motives  and 
ends.  Power  may  forbear  to  do  many  things  possible  to  it 
as  power,  because  they  would  be  alien  to  love ;  and  the 
forbearance  would  not  argue  defective  but  effective  will,  not 
imperfect  but  perfect  might,  because  exercised  in  obedience 
to  qualities  and  for  ends  higher  than  any  which  could  belong 
to  it  simply  as  power. 

Now,  the  moral  of  the  argument  is  this  :  if  we  conceive 
God  as  thus  conditioned  in  His  action,  we  shall  not  ask  of 
His  might  what  would  be  alien  to  His  love,  nor  of  His 
presence  what  would  be  opposed  to  His  righteousness,  nor 
of  His  knowledge  what  would  be  contrary  to  His  wisdom. 
In  other  words,  we  shall  think  of  God,  not  under  the  category 
of  energy,  but  as  a  Being  of  such  absolute  perfection  that 
He  governs  all  His  attributes  and  is  governed  by  none. 

2.  But  corresponding  to  the  conditions  which  affect  the 
action  of  the  Creator,  are  those  which  define  the  character 
and  status  of  the  creature. 

i.  Leibnitz's  notion  of  metaphysical  evil  expresses  the 
most  obvious  of  truisms.  No  created  being  can  possess  the 
attributes  or  the  beatitude  of  the  Creator,  or  have  His  outlook 
on  life.  To  begin  to  be,  is  to  be  possessed  of  being  without 
the  experience  needed  for  its  control  ;  and  no  measure  of 
seclusion,  as  in  some  imagined  paradise,  or  supersession  of 
responsibility  for  personal  conduct,  could  ever  teach  the  man 
how  to  rule  himself.  To  be  a  new  created  being  is  to  be 
nothing  more  than  a  potentiality  ;  and  it  is  as  such,  a  being 
compounded  of  infinite  capabilities,  that  man  is  of  transcen- 
dent worth  for  his  Creator,  and  of  incalculable  value  to  His 


1 56       CREATURE   REFLECTS   THE   CREATOR 

moral  system.  The  primitive  state  of  innocence  represents 
the  inexperience  of  the  man  just  arrived  on  the  scene.  He 
is  not  good,  he  is  not  evil ;  he  is  simply  in  a  negative  or 
privative  state ;  what  he  is  to  be  must  wait  on  his  earliest 
experiments  in  living. 

ii.  What  is  less  obvious  than  the  necessity  of  metaphysical 
evil,  but  is  more  important  for  the  question  at  issue,  is  the 
relation  of  the  Divine  Perfections  to  the  character,  quality, 
and  rank  of  the  created  being.  We  can  only  conceive  God 
as  moved  to  create  by  ends  determined  by  His  own  nature ; 
for  as  His  character  is  in  an  infinite  degree  nobler  and  more 
generous  than  the  aggregated  nobility  and  generosity  of  the 
created  universe,  it  follows  that  the  only  ends  capable  of 
satisfying  Him  must,  in  order  to  be  worthy  of  Him,  be  found 
in  Himself.  If,  then,  He  is  moved  to  create  by  an  end  that 
may  be  described,  on  the  divine  side,  as  His  own  glory,  its 
correlate  will  be,  of  course,  on  the  created  side,  the  creature's 
good.  And  this  will  be,  alike  as  regards  intensity  and 
extension,  a  more  pre-eminent  good  than  could  have  been 
conceived  or  attempted  had  the  good  been  accommodated 
and  proportioned  to  the  creature's  deserts.  But  the  good-will 
of  the  Creator,  while  in  itself  a  will  of  absolute  good,  must 
be,  in  action,  conditioned  by  two  things,  (a)  the  capacity,  and 
(/3)  the  capability  of  the  Created. 

(a)  Now,  the  only  capacity  capable  of  moral  good  must 
itself  be  moral ;  love  in  the  strict  sense  can  only  be  where 
love  has  been  or  may  be  reciprocated.  Things  may  be 
admired  or  praised,  and  they  may  even  excite  wonder,  but 
they  cannot  evoke  love.  The  very  admiration  they  awaken 
is  not  for  themselves,  but  for  their  author.  Art  means 
creation,  a  mind  and  hand  behind  the  thing  admired  ;  and  it 
is  the  mind  in  the  thing  we  praise,  not  merely  the  thing  in 
itself.  But  the  only  kind  of  creature  that  could  satisfy  a 
Being  of  absolute  goodness  would  be  a  creature  capable  of 
the  highest  form  of  good,  the  being  loved  by  the  Best,  and 


GOD   SEES   HIMSELF   IN   MAN  157 

therefore  able  to  love  the  Best  in  return.  Now,  these  distinc- 
tions will  help  Us  to  determine  what  qualities  will  make  the 
creature  acceptable  to  a  moral  Creator.  It  would  be  the 
un worthiest  of  all  possible  conceptions  to  imagine  God  as 
a  mere  infinite  Mechanic  or  Artist  creating  a  system  simply 
for  Himself  to  admire,  a  marvellous  mechanism,  cunningly 
contrived  like  the  watch  of  our  familiar  apologetic  ;  or  like 
the  engine  strongly  built  and  well  stored  with  fuel  imagined 
by  the  deists  ;  or  a  picture  skilfully  painted  and  proportioned 
which  should  show  the  most  wonderful  blending  of  colours  ; 
or  an  oratorio  which  should  exhibit  the  most  unexpected  and 
sublime  mingling  of  harmonies.  In  our  serious  and  thought- 
ful moods  we  confess  to  ourselves  that  a  God  who  passed 
His  eternities  only  in  the  contemplation  of  His  own  work- 
manship would  not  seem  to  us  worthy  of  the  only  worship  fit 
for  the  Deity.  If  this  be  true,  it  signifies  that  Creation,  to  be 
agreeable  to  Him,  must  be  of  creatures  like  Him  ;  spirit  as 
He  is  Spirit,  intellect  as  He  is  Intelligence,  love  as  Fie  is  Love. 
(/3)  But  this  involves  the  second  and  correlative  quality  in 
the  creature — -capability,  freedom,  the  power  to  give  or  to 
withhold,  to  welcome  or  to  cast  out,  to  obey  or  to  refuse 
obedience.  The  capacity  for  God  is  not  mere  physical 
space,  but  moral  capability  ;  and  moral  capability  has  two 
attributes — freedom  or  spontaneity,  and  educability  or  the 
faculty  of  continuous  amelioration.  When  the  freedom  is 
ordered,  moral  growth  will  follow  ;  where  the  will  obeys, 
there  the  nature  attains  progressive  enlargement,  which  can 
only  mean  that  the  more  capability  widens  moral  capacity, 
the  more  pleasure  God  will  have  in  the  creature,  in  the 
increased  room  made  to  receive  the  gifts  which  He  loves  to 
pour  into  the  soul  that  craves  His  presence.  Moral  freedom, 
therefore,  must  belong  to  the  only  creature  capable  of  being 
regarded  with  complacency  by  the  Creator.  If  we  could 
conceive  a  universe  of  automata,  or  of  reasons  purely 
mechanical,  which  would  be  as  if  nature  had  become  the 


158          THE   CREATOR   NOT   A   MECHANIC 

storehouse  for  an  infinite  multitude  of  logical  machines, 
what  would  they  be  but  a  universe  of  mere  contrivances,  the 
diversions  of  a  curious  mechanic,  no  creatures  of  a  moral 
Creator?  If,  further,  we  were  to  imagine  a  universe  of  such 
automata  equally  responsive  to  impact  from  some  moving 
body  without  and  to  logical  processes  started  from  within,  but 
absolutely  without  power  to  vary  either  the  logical  formulae 
or  the  direction  in  which  the  external  impact  would  drive 
them  ;  and  were  we  then  to  ask,  whether  they  would  be  able 
to  satisfy  the  soul  of  their  Maker,  what  could  the  answer  be 
but  this?  Were  He  only  an  architect,  a  skilled  builder,  or  a 
cunning  maker  of  watches,  which  once  adjusted  and  wound 
up  could  go  on  for  ages,  He  might  be  satisfied  with  a 
universe  of  this  sort ;  but  if  He  were  so  easily  satisfied,  then 
the  very  depth  of  His  satisfaction  would  be  the  measure  of 
His  imperfection,  for  it  would  argue  Him  void  of  those  moral 
qualities  which  we  conceive  most  essential  to  goodness. 

We  may  say,  therefore,  that  the  external  and  internal  con- 
ditions which  qualify  the  divine  actions,  and  the  attributes 
that  determine  the  divine  character,  must  have  something 
correspondent  in  the  capability,  the  quality,  and  the  status  of 
the  creature  ;  i.e.  the  more  morally  perfect  we  conceive  God 
to  be,  the  more  must  we  conceive  Him  incapable  of  satisfac- 
tion from  any  save  moral  creatures.  And  they  are  creatures 
who  must  make  their  own  experience,  form  their  own  char- 
acters, govern  their  own  conduct, — in  a  sense,  determine 
their  own  destiny.  If  God  were,  on  some  critical  occasion, 
by  direct  action  or  interference,  to  supersede  the  choice  of 
the  will  or  the  tendency  of  the  heart,  then  He  would,  in  the 
same  degree,  undo  His  own  creation,  annihilate  or  abolish 
its  moral  and  responsible  being.  We  come,  therefore,  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  only  creation  worthy  of  a  personal  God 
is  a  universe  of  persons  ;  and  persons  born  as  potentialities 
who  can  be  educated  by  experience,  awakened  to  reason, 
won  to  love,  and  persuaded  to  obedience. 


IMMUTABILITY   NOT   IMMOBILITY  159 

§  VI.      The ,  Permission  of  Moral  Evil  and  the  Deity 

i.  Now  it  is  evident,  from  the  principles  which  have  issued 
from  this  discussion,  that  the  more  we  conceive  the  Creator 
through  His  moral  attributes,  the  less  can  we  reduce  Him, 
by  means  of  physical  and  logical  categories,  to  a  mere 
abstraction  ;  and  as  we  think  of  Him  at  the  beginning  we 
must  think  of  Him  throughout.  The  immutability  of  God  is 
a  fixed  and  fundamental  principle ;  but  immutability  does 
not  mean  immobility.  God  is  in  nature,  character,  and 
purpose  unchangeable  ;  but  in  attitude  and  modes  of  action 
He  is  as  varied  as  the  infinite  needs  of  changeful  man.  For 
He  could  not  be  invariable  in  mind  and  end  unless  He  were 
variable  in  the  use  and  application  of  His  energies.  Hence 
the  act  and  fact  of  sin,  while  they  could  have  caused  no 
change  in  the  principles  which  determine  His  choices  and 
ends,  may  yet  have  effected  a  distinct  change  in  the  things 
He  chose  to  do  or  in  His  mode  of  doing  them.  This  means 
that  the  laws  of  thought  and  being  which  had  conditioned  the 
action  of  the  Creator,  did  not  cease  to  condition  Him  when 
providence  followed  upon  creation,  and  man  was  apostate 
instead  of  obedient.  But  the  significance  and  bearing  of 
the  principle  thus  stated  will  become  more  apparent  in  the 
attempt  to  deal  with  the  question  which  has  so  long  waited 
for  an  answer  : — -How  can  the  permission  of  the  evil  that 
has  so  depraved  man  be  reconciled  with  the  being  and 
character  of  an  infinitely  good  and  powerful  God  ? 

Now,  it  may  be  well  to  note  here  that  "  permission  "  is  not 
a  very  happy  word,  and  may  imply  consent  to  the  doing  Of 
an  action,  though  not  moral  approbation  of  the  action  itself. 
But  under  no  form  can  it  be  allowed  that  God  consented  to 
the  introduction  of  evil.  We  conceive  that  He  used  every 
means  short  of  recalling  II is  own  creation  to  prevent  it. 
Let  us  change  the  term  "permission"  for  the  terms  "non- 
prevention  of  the  evil,"  so  as  to  indicate  that  there  was  no 


moral  consent,  only  abstention  from  the  use  of  physical  force 
or  restraint.  But  even  as  thus  changed,  the  question  does 
not  raise  the  precise  issue,  which  may  be  more  positively  and 
explicitly  stated  thus — Is  the  exercise  of  obedience  or  the 
cultivation  and  practice  of  righteousness  compatible. with  an 
order  which  the  infinitely  good  and  holy  and  powerful  God 
has  instituted  ?  The  reply  would  be  instant  and  emphatic  : — 
"  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  this  compatibility  ;  His  order 
must  exist  expressly  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  obedience, 
holiness,  happiness."  But  now  let  us  honestly  ask,  Could 
there  be  obedience  where  disobedience  was  impossible?  or 
could  there  be  righteousness  if  wickedness  could  not  be 
done?  The  person  that  could  not  disobey  would  be  quite 
incapable  of  obeying.  If  there  was  no  power  to  do  evil,  there 
would  be  no  ability  to  do  good.  Where  the  will  has  no 
alternatives,  its  choices  can  have  neither  merit  nor  demerit ; 
where  only  one  path  lies  before  the  traveller,  error  may  be 
impossible,  but  so  is  discovery  ;  where  there  is  no  vice  to 
allure,  there  is  no  virtue  to  be  won.  The  very  notion  of  a 
moral  nature  under  a  moral  law  involves,  therefore,  an  order 
that  can  be  broken.  Where  there  is  no  law  that  can  be 
violated,  there  may  be  necessity,  there  may  be  a  conversion 
of  forces,  or  a  phenomenal  sequence  of  events,  but  nothing 
which  can  be  termed  law.  We  use  a  metaphor  when  we 
speak  of  the  law  of  gravitation  ;  for  it  knows  neither  precept 
nor  sanction,  but  only  describes  a  mode  in  which  things  are 
observed  to  behave.  Where  no  transgression  can  be,  there 
is  no  law,  and  it  is  impossible  to  predicate  obedience  or 
disobedience  of  a  planet,  a  river,  or  a  stone.  But  the  very 
essence  of  the  law  which  rules  man  is  that  it  can  be  obeyed 
or  disobeyed  ;  both  obedience  and  disobedience  must  be 
possible,  or  both  impossible.  Hence  if  a  universe  is  to  be 
created  where  moral  good  shall  be,  it  must  also  be  a  universe 
where  moral  evil  may  exist.  The  essential  quality  of  moral 
law  is  repeated  in  the  essential  character  of  the  moral  being. 


INVOLVE   POSSIBILITY   OF   EVIL  161 

If  such  a  being  were  necessitated,  he  could  be  neither  moral 
nor  under  moral  law  ;  he  could  be  neither  holy  nor  wicked, 
but  he  would  remain  simply  as  he  was  made — without 
character  and  without  will. 

If,  then,  it  was  good  to  have  moral  beings  under  moral 
law,  evil  must  be  possible.  Even  God  could  not,  however 
much  He  might  will  it,  cause  it  to  be  otherwise.  Things 
that  cannot  be  conceived  or  related  in  thought  are  in  the 
region  of  realities  impossible  things  ;  and  so  as  His  reason 
and  ours  are  akin,  the  things  ours  will  not  think  His  cannot 
achieve.  It  is,  therefore,  no  more  derogatory  to  the  majesty 
of  God  to  say  that  He  could  not  create  a  moral  being 
without  the  power  of  choice  than  to  say  that  He  could  not 
make  another  infinite,  or  cause  a  being  who  began  to  be  at 
a  definite  moment  to  have  all  the  experience  of  one  who 
had  been  from  eternity.  If,  then,  a  moral  must  be  a  free 
creature,  with  the  faculty  and  opportunity  of  choice,  a  new 
question  arises  :  Was  it  good  that  God  should  make  moral 
beings  ?  That  question  has  been  by  anticipation  answered. 
If  it  was  good  for  God  to  create  those  who  could  share  His 
own  beatitude,  He  could  do  so  only  on  the  condition  that 
He  made  them  capable  of  rejecting  that  for  which  they  were 
designed.  And  who  will  say  that  he  would  apply  another 
law  to  the  universe  and  its  Author  than  he  would  apply 
to  himself?  There  is  no  man  with  an  honourable  manhood 
within  him  who  is  not  enlarged  and  ennobled  by  both  the 
idea  and  the  fact  of  fatherhood  ;  but  every  man  who  wills 
to  become  a  father  faces  the  problem  which  God  faced 
when  He  made  the  universe.  In  the  home  and  in  the  family 
the  father  is  disciplined  by  the  child  as  much  as  the  child 
is  disciplined  by  the  father,  but  to  the  father  belongs  the 
responsibility  for  the  child's  being  ;  and  on  him  lie  duties  of 
self-restraint,  of  providence,  of  the  daily  concern  to  make  all 
things  that  happen  bear  upon  the  formation  of  the  higher 
moral  qualities  in  his  child.  May  we  not  say,  then,  that  what 

P.C.R.  I  I 


1 62  INTERFERENCE   NO   REMEDY 

justifies  the  responsibilities  man  dares  to  undertake  when  he 
becomes  a  parent,  justifies  God  in  making  a  universe  which 
shall  be  the  home  of  reason,  vocal  with  the  harmonies  of 
love  and  the  dissonances  of  life?  And  we  may  be  certain 
that  the  evil  we  now  feel  is  to  us  more  darkly  real,  and 
more  nearly  coincident,  if  not  indeed  identical,  with  the 
realm  of  being  than  it  is  to  Him  who  sees  the  end  from  the 
beginning  and  each  fraction  in  its  relation  to  the  whole. 

2.  But  at  this  point  a  question  we  have  long  foreseen  and 
anticipated  may  be  asked  : — Could  not  God,  when  man's  will 
inclined  to  evil,  have  intervened  and  changed  its  inclination 
or  even  prevented  its  choice  ?  But  intervention  would  have 
been  destruction.  A  will  suspended  in  its  choice  were  a 
will  destroyed.  It  would  only  be  a  masked  form  of  annihila- 
tion for  God  to  give  a  will  and  then  to  withdraw  it,  leaving 
the  man  standing  before  his  alternative  choices  a  will-less 
automaton.  Only  on  the  supposition  that  God  were  double- 
minded,  and  so  unstable  in  all  His  ways,  would  it  be  pos- 
sible to  believe  that,  having  first  created  man  as  a  being 
capable  of  acquiring  experience,  He,  in  fear  of  his  acquiring 
it  as  a  man  rather  than  as  a  god,  went  back  on  Himself, 
uncreated  His  own  creature,  and  refused  to  leave  him  to  act 
and  to  learn  by  action  as  He  had  meant  him  to  do.  But, 
it  may  be  urged,  the  change  or  intervention  could  have 
come  at  an  earlier  point.  When  the  vision  of  God  ranged 
through  all  the  infinite  multitudes  of  possible  worlds,  He 
must  have  foreseen  what  would  happen  in  the  ideal  He 
actually  selected  for  realization.  And  when  He  foresaw  evil, 
could  He  not  have  arrested  His  purpose,  or  have  stayed  His 
creative  hand  ?  But  who  then  would  have  been  victor  ? — 
God  who  turned  aside  from  His  purpose  because  of  possible 
evil,  or  the  possible  evil  that  caused  God  to  turn  aside? 
The  scheme  that  involved  no  difficulty  were  not  worth 
realizing  ;  the  Creator  who  because  of  difficulties  abandoned 
His  plan  could  surely  not  be  reckoned  as  either  courageous 


EVIL  IS:    WHY  IT  CONTINUES  163 

or  wise.  The  anthropomorphic  language  dismays  and  even 
revolts  me,  but,  in  the  absence  of  a  more  perfect  medium,  it 
must  be  used  in  the  question  which  concludes  this  section  : — 
Was  it  not  better  that  Deity,  instead  of  turning  aside  because 
of  evil,  should  go  on,  create  the  existence  where  evil  was  to 
be,  and  then  deal  directly  with  the  evil  when  it  had  become  ? 

§  VII.      Why  Evil  has  been  Alloived  to  Continue 

I.  The  question  which  has  just  been  put  brings  us  to  the 
next  stage  in  our  discussion  :  the  continuance  of  evil.  And 
here  we  begin  by  simply  formulating  the  principle  :  it  is 
impossible  to  conceive  the  good  and  holy  God  as  ever  con- 
ceding to  evil  the  right  to  be  ;  for  by  its  very  idea  it  is  a 
denial  of  His  sovereignty  and  a  challenge  of  His  claim  to  be 
the  First  and  the  Last  and  the  All  in  all.  And  this  principle 
enables  us  to  place  physical  and  moral  evil  in  their  true 
reciprocal  relations  as  integral  parts  of  a  single  system, 
elements  in  what  we  may  call  the  method  of  the  divine 
government.  For  though  the  two  evils  are  different  in  fact 
and  distinct  in  thought,  yet  unless  physical  evil  have  a  moral 
reason  and  function,  it  can  have  no  justifiable  existence  in  a 
moral  universe.  While,  then,  we  conceive  moral  evil  as  man's 
act,  we  conceive  physical  evil,  so  far  as  it  has  its  roots  in  the 
nature  of  man  and  springs  out  of  the  organic  relations  or 
social  and  historical  constitution  of  the  race,  as  belonging  to 
the  consequences  which  the  order  established  of  the  Creator 
has  caused  to  follow  upon  the  act.  I  do  not  like  to  use 
juridical  terms  of  God  and  His  relations  to  man,  but  there 
are  occasions  when  they  are  the  only  terms  that  can  be  used. 
If,  then,  such  terms  may  be  used  here,  we  might  say  that  La\v 
is  implied  in  the  ideas  of  both  moral  and  physical  evil,  but 
in  the  two  cases  Law  is  used  with  a  totally  different  both 
extension  and  connotation  :  in  the  one  case,  it  is  Law  as 
preceptive  and  prohibitive  which  is  broken  in  respect  of  what 
it  enjoins  or  forbids  ;  in  the  other  case,  it  is  Law  with  its 


164  LAW   AND  SANCTION  A   UNITY 

retributory  sanctions,  enforced  and  punitive,  that  is  active. 
The  precept  may  be  wholly  moral,  but  the  sanction,  whether 
held  to  be  penal,  disciplinary,  incidental,  or  vindicative,  must 
be  largely  physical.  Law  as  it  forbids  man  to  steal,  or  to  bear 
false  witness,  or  to  commit  murder,  is  a  precept  enjoined  by 
the  lawgiver,  perceived  by  the  reason,  and  fulfilled  or  broken 
by  the  man's  own  choice ;  but  law  as  it  punishes  the  man 
who  has  stolen,  or  borne  false  witness,  or  committed  murder, 
is  a  sanction  enforced  by  a  power  which  need  not  depend  on 
the  approval  of  the  man's  reason  or  the  consent  of  his  will. 
Now,  this  means  that  the  law  which  appears  to  us  twofold, — as 
moral,  a  precept  we  can  obey,  a  command  we  can  resist,  and, 
as  physical,  a  penalty  or  a  consequence  we  must  suffer,  may 
appear  as  a  unity,  i.e.  as  a  law  wholly  moral,  to  the  Creator, 
who  must  see  and  read  our  complex  life  in  its  context, 
with  the  physical  penetrating  the  moral,  the  moral  affecting 
the  physical,  both  reciprocally  active  and  inter-dependent. 
Hence  the  distinction  that  is  so  obvious  to  us  may  have  no 
being  for  God.  Where  the  moral  attributes  are  sovereign  the 

o  o 

view  of  the  universe  will  be  imperatively  moral  ;  and  so  what 
we  regard  as  physical  suffering  may  seem  to  Him,  who  sees 
the  whole  as  a  whole,  altogether  ethical  in  function  and  in 
value.  This  variety  of  aspect  is  not  unknown  even  to  our- 
selves ;  our  laws,  whether  civil  or  criminal,  are  many-sided, 
and  the  face  they  turn  to  different  sections  of  the  community 
is  never  quite  the  same.  The  legislature  will  see  the  law 
which  it  makes  as  a  whole  or  a  unity,  though  probably  the 
emphasis  in  its  mind  will  lie  on  the  end  to  which  the  law 
is  a  means  ;  the  judge  who  has  to  administer  the  law  will 
read  it  with  the  emphasis  thrown  on  the  sanction  by  which 
order  has  to  be  vindicated  and  justice  maintained  ;  the  law- 
breaker who  has  to  suffer  at  its  hands  sees  in  it  a  penal 
instrument,  and  feels  it  as  a  physical  force  ;  while  the  body 
of  the  citizens  feel  only  that  they  may  dwell  serenely  and 
securely  under  its  protection.  So  we  who  suffer  may  dis- 


AND   MAN   TO  GOD   IS  A   WHOLE  165 

tinguish  our  physical  pains  from  our  moral  deserts,  while  He 
who  made  the  physical  for  the  moral  may  steadily  see  the 
means  through  the  end  and  in  it,  both  alike  moral  and  alike 
good. 

But  this  principle  involves  another,  which  is  its  correlative 
or  counterpart.  For  what  is  true  of  the  law  must  also  be 
true  of  those  who  are  under  it,  i.e.  while  its  subjects  are  to 
us  single  persons  they  may  appear  to  the  Creator  as  a  unity, 
co-ordinated  as  a  collective  mind,  or  incorporated  in  the 
organism  of  nature  and  the  race.  In  other  words,  man  is  to 
God  a  whole,  a  colossal  individual,  whose  days  are  centuries, 
whose  organs  are  races,  whose  being  as  corporate  endures 
immortal  amid  the  immortality  of  its  constituent  units  ;  and 
this  unity  has  at  once  an  ethical  and  a  physical  character. 
Hence  there  must  be  a  divine  judgment  of  the  race  as  a  race, 
as  well  as  of  the  individual  man  as  an  individual  ;  and  the 
severer  the  judgment  on  the  race  the  more  leniently  will 
the  individual  be  judged.  For  while  the  race  may  cause 
suffering,  it  is  the  individual  alone  who  can  suffer  ;  and  the 
measure  in  which  his  sufferings  are  just  can  be  determined 
only  after  the  responsibility  has  been  equitably  proportioned 
between  himself  and  the  race.  It  was  this  idea  which  in  the 
older  theology  made  the  doctrine  of  original  sin  so  cognate 
to  the  doctrine  of  grace,  while  here  it  shows  the  need  of  a 
standard  too  absolute  to  allow  justice  to  be  lost  in  pity  or 
pity  to  be  sacrificed  to  justice.  For  evil  is  by  its  very  nature 
personal,  but  law  is  by  its  nature  universal,  and  it  is  through 
the  universal  that  the  personal  must  be  judged.  And  this 
limits  and  defines  both  the  responsibility  of  the  individual 
and  the  province  or  function  of  law.  On  the  one  hand,  he 
stands  at  once  above  and  within  nature  and  the  race,  above 
them  as  a  distinct  person,  within  them  as  an  inseparable  unit 
and  integral  part,  giving  to  both,  receiving  from  both,  and 
amenable  to  the  law  according  to  the  measure  or  the  merit  of 
his  giving  and  getting.  On  the  other  hand,  his  mind  or  will 


166         TIME  NOT  A  STATE   OF   PROBATION, 

may  choose  to  do  evil,  or  augment  the  evil  he  has  suffered 
from  nature  and  the  race.  And  it  is  here  where  the  law 
enters,  as  ideal  or  preceptive  to  determine  his  merit,  as  dis- 
ciplinary or  vindicative  to  apportion  the  penal  consequences 
which  will  best  suit  his  case  and  express  his  deserts.  And  as 
the  choice  is  the  act  of  the  man  as  a  whole,  so  the  con- 
sequences must  affect  the  whole  of  him,  natural  or  corporeal 
as  well  as  spiritual. 

2.  On  grounds  and  for  reasons  such  as  these  we  argue,  then, 
that,  however  moral  and  physical  evil  or  moral  and  physical 
law  may  appear  to  us,  they  stand  organically  related  in  the 
mind  of  Him  who  made  and  who  governs  nature  and  man. 
And  it  is  this  organic  connexion  of  the  two  laws  and  the 
two  evils  (which,  it  ought  to  be  observed,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  their  identity)  that  makes  it  possible  to  vindicate 
both  the  justice  and  the  goodness  of  God  in  the  face  of 
continued  moral  evil  and  universal  physical  suffering.  Were 
there  no  suffering,  moral  evil  would  live  a  sort  of  unchallenged 
and  authorized  life  ;  were  suffering  an  end  in  itself,  it  would 
imply  the  ferocity  of  him  who  either  allowed  it  to  be,  or 
himself  inflicted  it.  Were  it  even  only  penal,  it  would  signify 
his  injustice,  his  failure  to  discriminate  between  sinners  not 
simply  by  causing  all  to  suffer,  but  by  often  dealing  more 
severely  with  the  innocent  than  with  the  guilty.  W7hile, 
then,  the  connexion  is  positive,  it  may  be  termed  disciplinary 
or  educative  rather  than  punitive  or  retributory  ;  i.e.  the 
purpose  of  physical  evil  is  not  so  much  to  uphold  law  or 
vindicate  justice  as  to  change  and  instruct  man  and  form 
character.  The  older  apologetic  used  to  argue  from  the 
existence  of  suffering  that  this  was  a  state  of  probation. 
Both  the  idea  and  the  phrase  were  borrowed  from  Deism, 
and  were  alien  to  Christian  theology.  To  it  this  was  not  a 
state  of  probation,  but  a  fallen  state,  within  which  redeeming 
grace  was  active.  God  was  conceived  not  as  trying  men,  but 
as  seeking  to  save  them  ;  and  this  idea  represented  a  higher 


BUT   OF   RECOVERY   FROM   LAPSE  167 

and  more  generous  belief.  Physical  evil  may  be  coincident 
with  moral,  the  sign  of  a  fallen  state;  but  it  signifies  that  the 
state  is  not  final,  that  the  man  is  recoverable,  that  ameliorative 
forces  work  around  him  and  within  him,  detaching  him  from 
evil,  attracting  him  to  good,  showing  him  in  the  mirror  now 
of  his  heart,  now  of  his  imagination,  now  of  his  social  or 
domestic  experience,  the  miseries  that  follow  from  a  lustful 
will,  what  calamities  lurk  in  want  of  thought,  how  ages  of 
poisoned  existence  may  flow  from  the  brief  indulgence  of 
vicious  selfishness.  The  most  remarkable  thing  in  suffering 
is  not  its  extent  or  duration,  its  intensity  or  immensity,  but 
its  educative,  regenerative,  and  propulsive  force,  its  power 
to  make  man  conscious  of  his  enormous  responsibilities  and 
to  awaken  in  him  the  desire  to  fulfil  them.  So  conceived, 
physical  evil  may  be  described  as  a  divine  energy  for  moral- 
izing man  and  nature.  This  is,  if  not  its  main  function,  yet 
its  chief  result.  It  has  been  the  motive  of  all  our  beneficences, 
though  their  source  has  been  the  heavenly  Grace. 

But  the  argument  which  has  defined  the  action  and  the 
function  of  physical  evil  has  vindicated  the  goodness  of  God 
in  maintaining  the  conditions  which  allow  moral  evil  still  to 
continue  to  be.  It  continues  to  exist  not  as  a  rightful  or 
permanent  inhabitant  of  the  universe,  but  as  one  whose  very 
right  to  be  is  denied,  and  for  whose  expulsion  all  the  energies 
of  nature  have  been  marshalled  and  trained  to  fight.  And 
this  is,  as  \ve  conceive  the  matter,  the  only  conduct  which 
would  have  become  the  Deity  ;  certainly  we  could  not  con- 
ceive the  annihilation  of  the  creature  to  be  seemly  to  His 
majesty,  or  withdrawal  from  all  care  or  concern  for  him  to 
be  congenial  to  II is  grace.  On  the  contrarv,  if  we  mav  so 
express  ourselves,  evil  was  the  mute  but  potent  appeal  of  the 
creation  to  the  Creator  not  to  forsake  the  work  of  His  hands; 
and  was  it  not  an  appeal  His  own  very  honour  bound  Him 
to  regard  ? 

In  this   chapter   we   have    laboured    to   keep    our    thought 


1 68  THE  LAST   WORD  NOT   NATURE'S 

strictly  within  the  lines  of  a  natural  and  rational  theology, 
but  the  point  whither  the  argument  has  been  tending  is  clear : 
Nature  cannot  here  speak  the  last  word  ;  we  must  wait  the 
revelation  of  the  Son  of  God.  To  allow  evil  to  become  and 
to  continue  without  any  purpose  of  redemption — i.e.  to  leave 
it  as  an  ultimate  fact  and  the  final  state  of  created  existence 
— were  to  us  an  absolutely  inconceivable  act  in  a  good  and 
holy  and  gracious  God.  And  so  we  may  conclude  this  chapter 
with  two  questions  :  (a)  May  not  the  existence  of  evil  explain 
and  justify  the  event  which  we  call  the  Incarnation?  and  (/3) 
How  can  we  conceive  the  justice  and  the  goodness  of  God  in 
relation  to  evil  if  His  continued  and  final  action  towards  it 
be  excluded  from  consideration  ? 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF  HISTORY 

THE  positions  we  have  reached  may  be  described  as  too 
purely  abstract  to  be  of  any  scientific  significance;  but 
if  so,  they  will  not  be  correctly  described.  For,  in  attempt- 
ing to  discuss  the  principles  which  are  involved  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  concrete,  we  have  been  helped  to  a  more 
definite  idea  of  the  concrete  itself,  (a)  We  have  come  face 
to  face,  not  with  a  nature  which  is  but  an  aggregate  of 
chemical  elements  and  physical  energies,  or  a  mere  suc- 
cession of  living  forms  that  are  ever  struggling  to  live,  yet 
ever  succumbing  to  death ;  but  with  a  nature  which  is  veiled 
spirit,  which  speaks  of  mind  to  mind,  and  which,  as  an 
intelligible  order,  is  a  medium  of  intercourse  between  the 
Intelligence  it  embodies  and  the  intellect  by  which  it  is 
studied.  (/3)  And  Man  completes  the  lesson  of  Nature.  He 
is  not  a  mere  fortuitous  aggregation  of  atoms  or  an  organism 
made  by  his  environment,  whether  conceived  as  nature  or  as 
circumstances,  but  a  person  who  embodies  a  moral  law  so 
imperative  in  its  terms  as  to  imply  that  the  universe  in  which 
he  lives  is  also  moral.  (7)  And  the  life  he  lives  corresponds 
alike  to  the  nature  which  enfolds  him  and  to  the  nature  which 
he  realizes.  It  is  not  the  life  of  a  mere  physical  being  or 
animal  automaton,  but  of  a  moral  person,  standing  within 
nature,  yet  rising  above  it,  gifted  \vith  freedom,  yet  without 
either  the  knowledge  or  the  experience  that  could  at  once 
use  it  for  ends  becoming  the  ideal  of  his  personality  ;  with 
the  eternal  law  written  on  his  heart,  yet  with  fleshly  passions 
or  inherited  tendencies  or  defects  of  temper  that  obliterate 

the  law  or  bewilder  him  who  would  read  it.     And  so  there 

169 


fjo  MAN   DENOTES   THE   RACE 

arises  in  his  nature  a  conflict  which  is  only  too  well  expressed 
in  the  contradictions  of  his  conduct.  But  out  of  his  strug- 
gles with  himself  and  his  environment,  with  his  habits  and 
his  conscience,  with  the  nature  around  him,  the  law  within 
him,  and  the  God  above  him,  come  sufferings  that  educate 
and  ennoble.  From  life  he  so  learns  to  know  evil  and  good, 
sorrow  and  happiness,  that  it  may  well  be  described  as  a 
discipline  for  immortality. 

But  we  must  now  pass  from  what  some  may  still  conceive 
to  be  the  region  of  abstract  metaphysics  to  the  very  concrete 
region  of  the  history  which  shows  man  living  his  common 
and  collective  life.  Now,  it  is  not  my  purpose  either  to 
sketch  this  history,  which  could  be  done  here  only  in  an 
outline  too  shadowy  to  have  any  significance,  or  to  expound 
a  philosophy  of  its  course,  its  stages,  and  its  goal,  but  simply 
to  indicate  what  may  be  regarded  as  some  of  the  principles 
needed  for  its  interpretation  and  to  state  one  of  the  great 
problems  it  raises.  This  chapter  is,  indeed,  but  transitional; 
it  is  meant  to  connect  the  discussion  of  fundamental  questions 
in  religious  thought  with  a  discussion  concerning  historical 
religion. 

§  I.    The  Significance  of  History 

i.  The  point  where  the  new  discussion  joins  hands  with 
the  old  is  here :  the  man  who  is  at  once  the  interpreter  and 
the  interpretation  of  nature,  who  is  embodied  reason  and 
incorporated  law,  and  who  looks  at  the  perplexities  of  life 
with  an  eye  suffused  and  dim  from  the  troubles  of  his  own 
soul,  is  not  a  particular  but  a  typical  person.  What  we  con- 
ceive to  be  his  mind  does  not  mean  the  psychology  of  this 
child  or  that  individual,  the  philosophy  of  a  school  or  a  period, 
but  the  mind  of  generic  Man ;  and  so  man  here  denotes  a 
Race  with  a  history  behind  it  which  helps  to  explain  the 
mind  that  is  within  it.  And  this  history,  construed  as  man's 
articulated  mind,  signifies  that  the  science  of  nature  without 


HISTORY   HIS   ARTICULATED   MIND  171 

the  science  of  history  is  an  incomplete  and  an  indeciphera- 
ble fragment. 

Now  we  have  already  argued  that  nature  and  man  are  so 
related  that  it  must  be  read  through  him  and  he  be  read  into 
it  if  it  is  ever  to  be  more  than  a  mass  of  unintelligibilities. 
Without  him  it  would  be  as  unfinished  as  a  literary  fragment 
which  never  got  beyond  the  preamble  to  the  story,  and  which, 
indeed,  knew  nothing  of  any  plot,  and  less  than  nothing  of 
any  denouement.  But  the  parallel  goes  much  farther  than 
this,  and  means  that  the  creative  process  whose  beginnings 
can  be  traced  in  nature  is  continued  in  man  ;  that  his  acts 
and  achievements,  the  states  and  customs,  the  laws  and 
literatures,  the  arts  and  sciences,  the  philosophies  he  has 
elaborated  and  the  religions  he  has  believed,  are  as  real 
things  and  as  integral  parts  of  the  universe  as  any  of  the 
forces,  elements,  or  organisms  which  physical  science  is 
accustomed  to  think  it  handles ;  that  the  tendency  to  educe 
higher  from  lower  forms  reigns  in  human  as  well  as  in  natu- 
ral history,  and  was,  indeed,  seen  in  the  former  long  before  it 
obtained  recognition  in  the  latter ;  and  that  the  true  method 
of  interpretation  is  to  proceed  from  man  to  nature,  for  the 
highest  holds  and  knows  the  secret  of  the  lowest,  while  the 
lowest  neither  holds  nor  knows  the  secret  of  the  highest.  If, 
then,  the  history  of  man  be  the  continuation  of  the  record  of 
creation,  it  follows  that  the  creative  energy  has  not  ceased  to 
operate,  and  that  its  character,  qualities,  tendencies,  modes 
of  working  and  relation  to  the  forms  developed,  can  be  bet- 
ter studied  here  than  in  the  field  of  nature.  This  position  is 
fundamental  to  our  argument,  and  follows  from  the  parallel 
between  the  immanence  of  God  in  nature  and  in  man.  He 
dwells  in  both  and  He  works  through  both,  though  always  in 
methods  agreeable  to  the  medium  employed.  What  is  energy 
in  nature  is  reason  and  will  in  man,  but  they  are  no  less  ours 
that  they  are  inspired  by  Him,  and  no  less  His  that  they 
appear  in  us  as  conscious  and  voluntary  activities.  These 


1 72  THE   GROWTH   OF   CONSCIOUSNESS 

may  seem  but  cryptic  utterances ;  we  must  try  to  make  them 
more  intelligible  and  lucid. 

2.  The  experience  of  the  individual  has  an  instructive 
counterpart  in  the  life  of  the  race.  The  significance  of  his 
own  history  dawned  but  slowly  upon  the  mind  of  man.  It 
is  a  curious  but  certain  fact,  with  something  much  more  than 
a  psychological  interest,  that  Nature  was  at  first  a  much  more 
urgent  problem  to  him  than  he  was  to  himself.  His  earliest 
and  most  urgent  intellectual  need  was  to  adjust  himself  to 
his  environment,  to  make  out  the  meaning  of  the  world  he 
lived  in,  the  objects  he  handled,  the  food  he  lived  on,  the 
river  that  flowed  past  his  cave,  the  sun  that  shone  by  day, 
the  moon  that  walked  in  beauty  by  night,  the  stars  that  came 
out  of  the  darkness  and  hid  themselves  at  the  breaking  of 
the  dawn,  the  powers  that  worked  him  good  or  ill,  the  birth 
in  which  his  life  began,  and  the  death  in  which  it  ended.  He 
could  not  but  puzzle  himself  about  these  things.  What  did 
they  mean  ?  who  had  caused  them  ?  and  whence  had  they 
come  ?  what  did  he  himself  mean  ?  why  were  the  scenes 
around  him  and  he  so  short  a  time  together  ?  what  had 
been  before  him  ?  and  what  would  be  after  him  ?  These 
were  the  questions  his  curious  intellect  asked  of  itself  and 
of  Nature,  refusing  to  be  satisfied  without  some  more  or  less 
rational  response,  and  this  in  time  worked  itself  here  into  a 
science,  and  there  into  a  philosophy,  now  into  some  act  of 
worship,  and  again  into  an  article  of  religious  faith.  But  in 
the  long  and  slow  course  of  development  man  became  a 
greater  problem  to  himself  than  ever  Nature  had  been  to 
him,  though  he  did  not  even  then  discover  that  his  problem 
involved  a  vaster  and  more  colossal  Man  than  was  contained 
within  his  own  personality.  For  the  human  individual  is  no 
atom,  without  a  history  and  without  a  name.  He  begins  to 
be  generations  before  he  is  born  ;  then  he  is  born  into  a 
family,  he  resumes  the  family  he  is  born  into,  and  is  the 
sum  of  all  his  ancestors.  The  family  dwelt  in  a  village 


ITS   PROBLEMS,    PERSONAL  AND    COLLECTIVE      173 

which  lived  in  a  state ;  the  family  epitomized  the  village, 
and  the  village  epitomized  the  state,  while  the  state  em- 
bosomed the  village  and  the  village  absorbed  the  family  and 
the  family  the  individual.  The  state,  in  its  turn,  was  sub- 
sumed under  a  people,  was  heir  to  all  its  acquired  qualities, 
the  organ  of  its  peculiar  genius,  a  form  under  which  that 
genius  lived,  and  through  which  it  accomplished  its  work. 
The  people,  again,  was  a  member  of  a  still  wider  organism, 
belonged  to  a  given  species,  a  white  or  black,  a  tawny  or  yel- 
low race,  speaking  a  given  kind  of  language,  nasal  or  gut- 
tural, monosyllabic  or  polysyllabic,  inflexional  or  syntactical, 
or  both.  And,  finally,  the  species  was  absorbed  in  the 
genus ;  individuals,  families,  states,  and  kinds  were  compre- 
hended under  the  generic  Man,  the  collective  Race,  the  sum 
total  of  Humanity.  What  then  was  Humanity?  How  were 
its  parts  related  ?  Had  it  any  reason,  any  end  ?  Whence 
had  it  come,  and  whither  was  it  going  ?  Had  it  a  common 
life,  or  was  life  an  attribute  only  of  the  units  composing  it  ? 
How  were  the  periods  of  its  history  connected,  and  what  was 
the  value  of  its  several  ages  —  ancient,  middle,  modern  —  for 
each  other  and  for  the  whole  ?  And  without  any  solution  of 
these  questions  could  man,  even  as  a  solitary  individual,  be 
said  to  be  explained  ? 

3.  But  these  questions  were  for  long  the  problems  and 
speculations  of  an  elect  few  ;  even  now  they  are  to  the  vast 
majority  of  mankind  unknown  and  inconceivable.  For  they 
become  of  intellectual  interest  and  urgency  only  when  cer- 
tain ideas  emerge  which  bind  the  unit  consciously  to  man- 
kind. Those  ideas  may  be  represented  by  the  terms  :  —  the 
unity,  the  continuity,  and  the  community  of  human  life, 
order  and  purpose  in  human  history.  Man  had  to  be  con- 
ceived in  all  his  families,  races,  states,  and  times,  as  even 
more  a  unity  than  the  nature  which  enfolded  him,  while  his 
unity  included  a  variety  unknown  to  nature.  For  this  unity 
was  not  a  mere  term  of  co-ordination,  but  denoted  continuous 


174  UNITY    NOT   A   WELCOME   IDEA 

being,  a  race  immortal  through  the  mortality  of  its  units,  and 
with  a  life  which  every  moment  grew  out  of  the  life  that  was 
or  that  had  been.  And  the  life  as  continuous  was  common, 
possessed  by  all,  shared  by  each,  communicated  and  com- 
municable through  the  reciprocity  of  the  unit  with  the  whole, 
and  the  whole  with  the  unit.  And  so  this  unity  involved  an 
order  pervading  all  the  tumults  of  men,  harmonizing  all  their 
dissonances,  and  making  at  once  their  storms  and  calms, 
their  alliances  and  their  enmities,  their  jealousies  and  friend- 
ships, the  horrors  of  their  wars  and  the  victories  of  their 
peace,  work  out  the  end  towards  which  Humanity,  as  a  mass 
moved  by  its  units,  ever  tended  and  struggled. 

But  these  ideas,  though  native  to  what  may  be  termed  the 
ideal  in  man,  were  unwelcome  to  much  that  was  actual  in 
him.  They  represent  the  supernatural  rather  than  the  natu- 
ral elements  in  his  life;  and,  odd  as  it  may  seem,  man's  ear 
has  ever  been  quicker  to  hear  external  sounds  than  the  inner 
voice.  And  these  were  not  ideas  that  rose  unbidden,  demand 
ing  entertainment  and  refusing  to  be  dismissed  ;  but  guests 
to  whose  entreaties  the  natural  mind  and  passions  of  man 
could  offer  a  stout  resistance.  For  the  very  conditions  that 
made  Nature  speak  to  man,  turned  man  himself  dumb.  Thus 
the  idea  of  unity  has  proved  to  be  an  offence  to  what  we  may 
term  the  natural  human  mind  in  all  the  stages  of  its  culture. 
Savage  man  was  proud  of  his  family  and  his  tribe ;  other 
families  were  there  to  be  robbed,  other  tribes  were  there  to 
be  slain  ;  what  he  cared  for  was  not  to  know  his  kinship 
with  them,  but  his  differences  from  them,  alike  as  regards 
origin,  fortunes,  and  destiny.  And  this  pride  of  race  or  blood 
was  even  more  a  note  of  civilized  than  of  savage  man  ;  and, 
strange  to  say,  drew  its  inspiration  from  causes  that  ought 
to  have  been  its  death.  Thus  his  culture  made  the  Greek 
scornful  of  the  barbarian,  his  religion  made  the  Jew  insolent 
to  the  Gentile,  his  law  made  the  Roman  citizen  jealous  of  the 
provincial.  And  this  is  not  an  individual,  it  is  an  even 


WHAT   IT  SIGNIFIES  175 

intenser  political  and  social  feeling.  For  what  are  states  in 
their  relation  to  each  other  but  embodiments  of  that  indus- 
trial jealousy  and  exclusive  pride  which  has  made  so  many 
of  them  like  colossal  personalities  inspired  by  greed,  ambi- 
tious for  conquest,  full  of  the  lust  of  battle  with  feebler  tribes 
and  peoples,  ready  to  find  fame  and  even  happiness  in  annex- 
ing the  wealth  of  those  they  subdued,  and  to  use  the  very 
strength  of  the  vanquished  as  if  it  were  their  own  ?  It  was 
therefore  not  by  any  easy  process  of  Nature,  but  by  a  high 
and  supernatural  grace,  that  the  unity  of  man  became  first  a 
possible,  then  a  tolerable,  and  finally  a  victorious  idea. 

§    II.      The  Ideas  of  Unity  and  Order  in  History 

i.  But  what  does  unity  as  here  applied  mean  ?  The  idea 
is  so  complex,  and  contains  so  many  and  so  varied  elements, 
that  it  may  well  break  while  being  stretched  wide  enough  to 
comprehend  them  all.  The  term  does  not  denote  unity  of 
origin  either  as  regards  time  or  place  or  mode  ;  but  it  does 
denote  unity  of  source  or  cause,  the  equal  and  cognate  re- 
lation of  all  to  the  one  Creator  who  is  the  common  Father 
of  men.  It  also  expresses  unity  of  nature,  a  oneness  of  spirit 
or  of  reason,  which  shows  itself  in  all  minds  being  subject  to 
the  same  laws  and  conditions  of  thinking,  and  which  makes 
thought  simply  as  thought  intelligible  to  every  mind,  and 
every  mind  capable  of  knowing  and  being  known  to  every 
other.  The  metaphysical  idea  of  unity  differs  from  the 
physical,  for  the  conscious  unit  who  lives  within  the  organic 
unity  called  the  human  race  is  divided,  as  by  the  whole 
diameter  of  being,  from  the  unconscious  atom  which  is  a 
convertible  moment  in  a  physical  universe  it  can  neither 
know  nor  be  known  to.  It,  further,  connotes  sameness  of 
value,  not  adventitious,  but  essential,  not  as  actual  or  realized, 
but  as  real  and  realizable  ;  and  makes  the  savage  the  equal 
of  the  sage,  not  in  extrinsic  and  attained,  but  in  intrinsic  and 
potential  worth.  The  substantive  thus  becomes  an  ethical 


1 76  UNITY   AN    IMMANENT   TELEOLOGY 

unity,  for  the  most  refined  has  duties  to  the  coarsest;  the 
man  who  leads  the  van  has  in  his  keeping  the  life  of  him 
who  brings  up  the  last  rear  guard.  It  is  therefore  a  unity 
which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  accidents  of  existence  ; 
indeed  it  finds  in  these  —  the  differences  of  colour,  climate, 
custom,  language,  laws,  religions  —  the  supreme  hindrances 
to  its  outward  realization ;  and  so  it  tends  to  grow  into  a 
unity  of  interests,  a  communion  of  responsibilities,  a  law  of 
solidarity  which  makes  the  good  of  any  a  common  good,  and 
the  injury  of  one  a  harm  to  all.  As  in  physics  the  unity 
of  energy  is  expressed  in  the  correlation  and  convertibility  of 
forces,  so  the  unity  of  man  is  authenticated  by  the  capability 
of  men  to  become  each  like  to  the  other.  And  if  we  seek  a 
name  for  the  common  essence  or  character  which  constitutes 
this  unity,  what  better  one  need  we  desire  than  Humanity, 
a  name  which  so  felicitously  combines  the  ethnical  and  the 
ethical,  the  real  and  the  ideal  elements  in  the  conception  ? 
For  the  term  expresses  a  process  as  well  as  a  fact,  since 
wherever  unity  is  believed,  unification  begins  ;  and  attempts 
are  made  to  realize  the  dream  of  the  one  humanity  which  is 
yet  to  stand  up  and  build  upon  the  earth  the  city  of  God. 

2.  Out  of  this  unitv,  with  its  correlative  community  and 
continuity  of  life,  comes  what  we  may  describe  as  the  im- 
manent teleology  which  makes  man's  progress  in  civilization 
a  progressive  realization  of  reason,  the  incorporation  in  the 
societies  and  states  he  creates  of  the  qualities  intellectual, 
ethical,  aesthetic,  and  religious  by  virtue  of  which  he  is  man. 
If  his  customs  and  institutions,  languages  and  religions,  arts 
and  literatures,  stages  and  degrees  of  civilization  be  studied 
in  themselves,  they  will  appear  to  present  an  infinite  variety ; 
but  if  they  be  looked  at  in  relation  to  the  mind  which  has 
been  their  source,  it  will  be  seen  that  there  have  been  at 
work  certain  uniform  causes  which  express  a  certain  unity  in 
the  causal  nature.  For  it  could  only  be  in  obedience  to 
some  immanent  tendencies  or  laws  of  being,  though  educed 


CIVILIZATION    ITS   EMBODIMENT  177 

and  exercised  by  external  needs,  that  men  have  everywhere 
grouped  themselves  into  families,  families  have  formed  them- 
selves into  tribes,  tribes  have  aggregated  into  nations,  and 
nations  expanded  and  consolidated  into  states.  It  is  due  to 
no  accident  that  in  every  community  systems  of  legislation 
have  arisen  whose  affinities  can  be  explained  only  by  factors 
of  origin  which  are  common  in  nature  and  invariable  in 
action,  though  their  difference  simply  the  dissimilarity  of  the 
conditions,  outer  and  inner,  under  which  each  community  has 
lived  and  tried  to  order  its  life.  Industries,  too,  and  arts  have 
risen  and  grown  as  if  they  were  spontaneous  things,  though 
they  are  products  of  will  and  creations  of  reason,  affected 
indeed  by  climate  and  geographical  situation,  but  determined 
as  regards  being  by  the  character  and  quality  of  the  race. 
Commerce  and  exchange,  economic  states  and  conditions, 
may  also  be  brought  under  the  categories  of  law  and  reason; 
and  so  represent  the  operation  in  human  nature  of  common 
and  stable  factors.  Literature  is  as  universal  in  its  being  as 
it  is  varied  in  its  forms,  existing  here  as  the  rude  or  savage 
story,  there  as  the  classic  poem  or  elaborate  romance ;  but 
wherever  or  whatever  it  may  be,  it  embodies  the  ideas  by 
which  some  people  lived  and  were  moved.  Religion  is  the 
greatest  and  most  distinctive  of  all  the  creations  of  the 
human  spirit,  in  form  the  most  infinitely  diversified,  but  in 
substance,  in  ultimate  ideal  constituents,  the  most  invariable. 
The  essential  unity  of  these  products  of  the  reason,  and, 
consequently,  of  the  reason  which  has  created  them,  is  seen 
in  their  communicability,  their  being  in  the  most  perfect 
degree  exchangeable  and  transmissible  things.  Nation  can 
borrow  from  nation  ;  the  later  is  the  heir  of  the  earlier  age. 
And  so  no  state  creates  a  good  for  itself  alone,  and  no  empire 
can  do  an  evil  that  is  not  an  injury  to  the  race.  The  life  of 
humanity  is  one,  and  its  goods  are  common.  The  uniform- 
ities of  Nature  have  their  counterpart,  and,  as  it  were,  intel- 
lectual equivalent,  in  the  unities  of  History. 

P.C.K.  12 


1 78  LAW   AMID   THE   COLLISION    OF   WILLS 

3.  But  if  unity  was  a  late  and  hard  idea  to  acquire,  order 
was,  though  for  different  reasons,  still  later  and  harder.  For 
what  is  the  conflict  of  forces,  the  tempestuous  strife  of  ele- 
ments in  Nature,  compared  to  the  collision  of  will  and  passion 
in  man  and  between  men  ?  "  He  loved  the  better,  he  did 
the  worse,"  represents  a  fact  of  collective  as  of  personal 
experience.  If  a  single  state,  nay,  if  a  single  city,  be  taken 
as  a  type  of  man,  what  can  his  history  seem  but  the  chosen 
arena  of  wilfulness  or  lawless  accident,  the  field  where  an 
infinite  multitude  of  choices,  each  under  the  guidance  of  a 
reason  which  does  not  show  itself  reasonable  because  bent 
only  on  petty  aims  and  mean  ambitions,  meet  daily  in  force- 
ful antagonism  ?  How  is  it  possible  to  discover  order  in 
history  when  all  that  can  be  discovered,  if  man  be  studied 
in  his  actual  life,  is  a  mass  of  colliding  units,  every  unit  being 
a  centre  of  force  which  cannot  be  changed  by  expenditure 
into  some  other  mode  of  existence,  because  where  the  soul 
is  concerned,  the  fiercest  impact  against  other  souls  makes 
each  only  the  more  distinctly  personal?  The  state  of  war 
in  the  savage  tribe  is  a  state  of  kindly  humanity  compared 
with  the  mass  of  latent  or  open  violence  in  the  modern  city, 
where  nothing  but  the  overmastering  strength  of  the  law, 
which  is  sovereign,  can  hold  down  the  explosive  energy 
stored  in  thousands  of  sullen  and  discontented  wills.  And 
if,  when  life  is  studied  in  the  concrete  present,  we  can  see 
only  this  conflict  of  lawless  wills,  how,  when  the  whole  is 
regarded,  can  there  be  any  room  for  the  ideas  of  law,  or 
progress,  or  purpose  ?  And  without  these  what  could  history 
seem  save  a  chaos  less  rational  and  more  disordered  than 
that  which  the  ancient  imagination  conceived  as  heaving 
tumultuous  in  the  abyss,  before  the  broad-bosomed  earth,  or 
the  starry  heaven,  or  "  the  golden-tressed  sun "  rose  to  call 
out  of  the  confusion  a  radiant  and  ordered  cosmos  ? 

But  here  the  doctrine  of  the  connexion  and  the  continuity 
of  Nature  and  man  asserts  itself.  For  if  no  order  or  law  can 


UNORDERED   HISTORY   A   MINDLESS   CHANCE    179 

be  found  in  history,  the  collective  life  of  man  will  represent 
only  a  mindless  chance ;  and  if  law  be  left  out  of  human 
life,  can  it  be  conceived  to  reign  in  Nature  ?  And  if  we  con- 
ceive it  to  reign  in  the  lower,  but  not  in  the  higher  realm, 
what  completeness  or  consistency  can  there  be  in  our  view 
of  the  universe  ?  Mind  surely  cannot  stand  within  an  ordered 
Nature  with  this  as  its  sole  distinction  —  that  it  is  the  home 
of  all  clisorderliness.  To  find  physical  laws  inviolable,  and 
then  to  allow  no  historical  laws  to  exist,  would  be  to  act  like 
a  man  who  should  find  the  alphabet  significant,  but  no  sig- 
nificance in  the  literature  created  by  the  reason  of  the  phi- 
losopher or  the  imagination  of  the  poet.  And  so  thinkers 
were  driven  to  seek  in  history  the  law  and  order  which 
they  had  found  in  Nature,  though  their  search  was  slower 
and  less  successful  in  the  one  case  than  it  had  been  in  the 
other.  It  was  characteristic  that  the  idea  had  come  to  the- 
ology long  before  it  dawned  on  philosophy,  and  while  as 
yet  science  had  no  dream  of  it  or  care  for  it.  Men  who 
had  conceived  the  Divine  Will  as  the  cause  of  Nature  could 
not,  with  any  show  of  logical  consistency,  allow  that  in  the 
higher  realm  of  mind  God  had,  by  leaving  the  whole  course 
of  time  to  the  mercy  of  an  infinity  of  blind  and  aimless 
wills,  deposed  Himself  and  enthroned  Accident.  Hence  it 
became  a  necessity  to  belief  to  introduce  some  idea  of  law  in 
history;  and  the  form  under  which  this  was  attempted  to  be 
done  was  by  making  the  will  of  God  the  sole  efficient  factor 
of  movement  and  change.  His  was  affirmed  to  be  the  one 
free  will,  and  lie  foreordained  and  executed  all  things  accord- 
ing to  His  good  pleasure.  While  Freedom  reigned  in  heaven, 
Necessity  governed  on  earth  ;  and  men  were  but  pawns  in 
the  hands  of  the  Almighty,  who  moved  them  whithersoever 
He  willed.  This  was  the  principle  common  to  theologies 
like  those  of  Augustine  and  Calvin,  and  to  philosophies  like 
those  of  Spinoza  and  Leibnitz;  but  while  it  made  of  God  the 
highest  reality,  it  also  made  illusions  of  our  most  real  experi- 


i8o  IDEA   OF   ORDER   IN    HISTORY 

ences,  and  turned  the  most  invincible  of  human  beliefs  — 
the  belief  of  man  in  his  own  freedom  —  into  the  unveracity 
of  a  nature  which  could  not  choose  but  lie.  Such  a  theory 
had  not,  therefore,  the  secret  of  continued  life  within  it, 
and  died  before  the  emphasis  which  came  to  be  progressively 
laid  on  the  truth  of  human  nature  and  the  reality  of  human 
experience. 

But  though  the  idea  of  order  be  necessary  to  the  scientific 
views  both  of  nature  and  of  history,  yet  the  order  is  not  in 
the  two  cases  identical  in  kind  and  character.  The  order  of 
nature  is  a  rigorous  uniformity,  but  the  order  of  history  is 
veiled  in  an  infinite  variety.  In  nature  there  is  a  uniform 
energy,  incapable  of  exhaustion  by  expenditure  or  of  destruc- 
tion by  change  ;  but  in  history  the  cause  of  movement  is 
though  one  yet  not  uniform,  and  is  so  highly  and  variously 
conditioned  as  to  appear  often  arbitrary  or  accidental  in 
action  rather  than  simply  contingent.  In  nature  the  opera- 
tive cause  necessitates,  but  in  history  there  are  forces  that 
lead  as  well  as  forces  that  drive ;  and  it  is  here  no  paradox 
to  say  that  the  power  which  does  not  persuade  will  be  unable 
to  compel.  Indeed,  we  may  affirm  that  what  appears  in  the 
vicissitudes  of  states  or  the  careers  of  persons  now  as  fate 
or  necessity,  and  now  as  chance  or  luck,  will  be  found  on 
analysis  to  be  beliefs  translated  into  facts  by  the  energy  of 
some  rational  will  or  wills.  And  this  means  that  the  factors 
of  order  in  history  must  be  stated  in  the  terms  of  mind 
rather  than  of  matter,  i.e.  as  reasons  and  motives,  as  needs 
and  desires,  as  beliefs  and  aims,  rather  than  as  forces,  static 
and  dynamic.  But  if  mind  be  the  main  maker  of  order  in 
history,  then  its  movement  will  be  progressive,  the  struggle 
of  mind  to  realize  itself,  to  be  emancipated  from  the  domin- 
ion of  what  is  not  mind  ;  and,  therefore,  from  the  restrictions, 
physical,  political,  social,  which  hinder  the  development  of 
its  immanent  ideal,  personal  and  collective.  If  order  be  so 
conceived,  then  we  may  define  it  as  the  tendency  which  the 


MIND   AS   THE    MAKER   OF   ORDER  181 

reason  institutes  and  governs,  but  nature  and  passion  now 
condition,  now  limit,  and  now  impede,  towards  the  realization 
of  its  idea  as  reason,  i.e.  the  attainment  of  the  highest  free- 
dom, or  the  right  of  man  to  be  himself,  a  free  man  in  a  free 

state. 

§  III.    The  Cause  of  Order  in  History 

i.  But  so  to  conceive  the  order  is  also  to  determine  how  its 
cause  must  be  conceived.  The  cause  is  mind  or  reason  or 
thought,  which,  whether  it  be  impersonated  in  man,  embodied 
in  nature,  or  operative  in  the  forces  and  tendencies  which 
govern  human  affairs,  is  one  in  essence,  cognate  in  all  its 
forms,  and  kindred  in  movement,  though  varied  in  manifes- 
tation. What  is  involved  in  this  statement  may  be  briefly 
thus  exhibited. 

i.  Man  is  the  vehicle  of  the  order  ;  through  him  as  mind 
it  is  realized.  This  does  not  mean  that  he  is  or  has  always 
been  a  being  of  high  or  developed  intelligence ;  but  only  that 
he  must,  in  however  germinal  a  form,  be  rational  to  be  man. 
He  may  be  but  potential  intellect ;  but  whatever  he  may  be, 
the  energy  which  compels  all  life  to  grow  forces  the  potential 
to  struggle  into  the  actual.  In  other  words,  reason  must  act 
according  to  its  nature  ;  and  its  nature  is  to  express  and  to 
enshrine  itself  in  forms,  customs,  laws,  institutions,  which 
reflect  it  and  correspond  to  the  stage  of  growth,  culture,  or 
development  it  has  reached.  As  it  is  the  nature  of  the  normal 
reason  so  to  behave,  this  behaviour  is  not  the  characteristic 
of  one  person,  but  of  all  persons  ;  their  affinities  make  their 
collective  action  contributory  to  a  common  end,  though  the 
line  along  which  they  act  may  be  indefinitely  extended  and 
may  here  and  there  bend  into  the  most  curious  and  tortuous 
curves.  The  person  is  thus,  by  the  very  idea  of  him,  a  social 
unit,  and  all  his  action  contributes  to  modify  or  develop  the 
social  unity. 

ii.  The  man  who  is  reason  lives  within  a  rational  system 
and  in  intercourse  with  it.  The  intelligible  which  is  with- 


1 82          CONCURRENCE   OF   NATURE,    MAN,   GOD, 

out  operates  upon  the  intellect  which  is  within,  evoking  its 
energies  and  stimulating  its  thought.  The  action  of  nature 
upon  mind  represents  the  action  not  of  mere  physical  forces 
or  material  qualities  upon  the  senses  of  some  more  or  less 
passive  percipient,  but  of  one  reason  upon  another  reason. 
It  is  a  movement  in  which  the  subjective  reason  which  is 
man,  and  the  objective  Spirit  which  weaves  the  appearances 
we  see  Him  by,  alike  participate.  The  nature  which  is  visible 
Mind  speaks  to  the  man  who  is  embodied  spirit.1 

iii.  Nature,  though  the  earliest,  is  not  the  sole  Intelligible 
which  acts  upon  man ;  man  is  another.  The  individual  is 
impossible  without  the  society,  and  the  longer  the  race  lives 
the  more  potent  grows  the  power  of  the  past  over  the  pre- 
sent ;  persons  affect  persons,  who  are,  in  an  ever  progressive 
degree,  healed,  helped,  or  harmed  more  by  them  than  by 
Nature.  This  means  that  moral  forces  are  cumulative  as  well 
as  regulative.  It  follows  that  personalities  become  factors  of 
progress  marking  man's  movement  towards  civilization ;  and 
the  philosophy  which  does  not  reckon  the  potent  personality 
as  a  great  generative  ethical  force  will  never  fully  and  really 
render  a  rational  account  of  human  life.2 

iv.  The  race  which  is  conceived  to  be  so  constituted  does 
not  live  in  isolation  from  its  Source.  The  forms  that  struggle 
for  life  can  never  be  separated  from  their  environment.  The 
visible  environment  of  man  is  twofold,  an  intelligible  nature 
and  a  rational  and  a  moral  society ;  but  the  invisible  Environ- 
ment, the  common  background  of  both,  is  the  Spirit  whose 
thought  has  been  aiming  in  each  and  through  each  at  ever 
fuller  and  more  adequate  expression.  There  is  nothing  so 
inconsequent  and  hateful  as  the  atheism  which  finds  God  in 
nature  but  not  in  man,  in  creation  but  not  in  history.  If  we 
believe  that  God  never  ceases  to  govern,  we  must  conclude 
that  His  activity  will  find  a  large  field  for  its  exercise  in 
human  affairs.  And  if  His  will  be  active  there,  then  it  is  not 

1  Ante,  pp.  35-37.  2  Ante,  p.  92. 


MAKES   HISTORY   CONTINUED   CREATION          183 

simply  as  a  directive,  but  as  a  creative  will,  and  His  peculiar 
creations  are  the  ideas  and  ideals  that  most  make  for  freedom 
and  righteousness.  Of  course  His  action  is  mediate,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  His  that  it  is  through  another,  by  men  that 
it  may  be  for  man.  It  is,  too,  limited  by  the  intelligence  and 
conditioned  by  the  freedom  of  the  agent,  and  has  in  its 
results  all  their  infinite  degrees  of  capacity  and  attainment, 
but  still  He  is  the  impulse  that  moves,  His  the  fraction  of 
truth  or  equity,  perhaps  infinitesimal,  which  their  elaborate 
structures  have  been  organized  to  preserve. 

2.  Out  of  the  idea,  then,  of  history  as  a  continued  creative 
process  due  to  the  continued,  though  conditioned,  activity  of 
the  original  creative  Mind  rises  the  problem  we  desire  to 
discuss :  —  By  what  method  and  through  what  agency  have 
the  ideas  of  order  and  law  come  into  man's  life  and  incor- 
porated themselves  first  in  tribal,  then  in  national,  and  finally 
in  universal  forms?  How  has  it  happened  that,  in  spite  of 
the  strong  tendencies  in  human  nature,  personal  and  social, 
to  selfish  preservation  and  enlargement  of  being,  there  has 
yet  been  a  development  of  the  race  towards  a  wider  reason 
and  a  nobler  mind  ?  The  problem,  which  may  be  said  to  be 
common  to  all  modern  speculations,  philosophical  or  theo- 
logical, concerning  the  cause,  method,  and  end  of  human 
history  may  be  stated  in  more  detail  somewhat  thus  : 

i.  The  course  of  human  society  has  been  to  create  an 
order  higher  than  the  natural,  to  substitute  an  "  ethical 
process,"  governed  by  altruistic  principles,  for  the  "  cosmic 
process,"  where  the  weakest  goes  to  the  wall  and  the 
strongest  survives.  The  course  has  not  been  uniform  or 
rapid  ;  but  if  we  take  the  foremost  peoples  as  the  standard  of 
the  possibilities  in  man  and  in  society,  then  the  distance 
covered  by  them  in  the  movements  from  the  savage  to  the 
civilized  state,  is  simply  immeasurable. 

ii.  Among  the  most  potent  factors  of  human  development 
there  stand  certain  primary  impulses,  instincts,  or  passions 


1 84  NATURE   AND   PASSION   SUBDUED 

which,  as  representing  in  the  human  individual  and  society 
the  same  order  of  facts  and  forces  that  create  in  the  lower 
animals  the  struggle  for  life,  we  may  call  natural.  These 
primary  passions  are  apparently  most  potent  in  the  more 
rudimentary  stages  of  social  evolution,  where  the  strong  man 
is  the  sovereign,  and  the  only  order  obeyed  is  his  will,  while 
hunger  and  greed  recognize  no  moral  restraints;  and  they 
persist  in  the  aggressive  selfishness  of  individuals  and  the 
colossal  selfishness  of  classes  or  States.  These  passions  of 
ungoverned  human  nature,  which  is  yet  feeling  after  modes 
and  principles  of  government,  are,  up  to  a  certain  point, 
efficient  in  developing  both  the  personal  and  the  social 
organism ;  but  when  this  point  is  reached,  they  tend  to 
become  forces  of  disintegration  and  dissolution.  For  as 
forms  of  mere  force  their  tendency  is  to  evoke  forms  of 
countervailing  forces,  i.e.  to  beget  the  private  and  social 
vices  which,  as  public  injuries,  first  burden  and  impoverish 
the  feeble,  and  then  grow  heavier  burdens  than  the  strong 
can  carry. 

iii.  If,  then,  there  is  to  be  rational  and  moral  progress, 
or  movement  towards  a  happier  and  better  balanced  state 
of  being,  it  must  be  by  some  process  or  power  which  sub- 
ordinates first  the  individual  and  then  the  whole  to  some 
higher  law  than  the  mere  struggle  to  live,  or  the  hunger  that 
will  not  be  denied  food,  or  the  passion  that  only  indulgence 
can  assuage.  This  higher  law  may  be  described  as  the 
emergence  of  an  authority  that  can  compel  the  will  of  the 
unit  to  seek  the  good  of  the  whole,  and  the  will  of  the  whole 
to  labour  for  the  good  of  the  unit. 

iv.  This  authority  must,  in  the  ultimate  analysis,  be  ideal, 
i.e.  an  authority  which  does  not  repose  on  mere  strength  or 
physical  might,  but  makes  its  appeal  to  the  reason,  and  rules 
by  governing  men  from  within,  by  the  categorical  imperative 
which  speaks  to  the  conscience,  and  by  the  persuasion  which 
constrains  the  will  to  seek  the  better  part.  The  authority 


BY   AN    IDEAL   WHICH    IS   RELIGION  185 

must  be  thus  ideal  in  its  nature,  and  ethical  in  its  form,  func- 
tion, and  scope :  for  force,  whether  natural  or  institutional  in 
its  origin,  whether  military,  sacerdotal,  or  regal  in  its  kind, 
can  cure  no  moral  ill ;  and  is  in  its  essence  only  a  primary 
passion  become  colossal  and  victorious. 

v.  The  only  ideas  capable  of  subduing  man's  primary  pas- 
sions and  aboriginal  nature,  and  creating  an  order  higher 
than  they  knew,  are  ideas  which  are  in  harmony  with  the 
ideal  he  incorporates,  and  which  he  has  evolved  in  the  course 
of  his  historical  existence.  This  evolution,  though  it  is  a 
natural,  is  yet  not  a  purely  self-determined  process,  but  is 
moved  from  above  as  well  as  from  within,  by  the  creative 
will  as  well  as  by  the  creature's.  But  unless  the  ideas  which 
are  to  govern  man  were  germane  to  his  nature,  they  could 
not  he  appropriated  by  him,  or  obtain  ascendency  over  him. 

vi.  Hence  comes  the  problem  —  Have  any  ideas  of  this 
order  grown  up  at  once  in  and  out  of  the  intellectual  and 
moral  life  of  man,  i.e.  ideas  that  had  the  power  to  master  his 
natural  impulses  and  passions,  to  penetrate,  transfigure,  and 
command  the  nature  which  needed  to  be  subdued,  and  then, 
by  means  of  the  change  effected  in  it,  to  organize  a  higher 
and  more  ethical  society  ?  If  so,  whence  did  these  ideas 
come  ?  and  what  gave  them  their  authority  ? 

vii.  But  if  this  be  the  problem,  it  is  obvious  in  what  direc- 
tion we  must  look  for  a  solution,  for  modern  research  has 
proved  that  the  main  factor  by  which  the  higher  ideas  and 
emotions  are  evoked  for  incorporation  in  human  conduct, 
custom  or  institution  is  Religion.  In  it  there  is  expressed 
a  mind  which  transcends  Nature,  and  reaches  out  to  ideals 
which  Nature  alone  could  not  realize.  If,  then,  man  and  the 
powers  that  move  him  in  history  are  to  be  understood,  we 
must  try  to  understand  the  religions.  And  so  we  are  by 
the  philosophy  of  history  introduced  to  the  philosophy  of 
Religion. 


CHAPTER   VI 

THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF   RELIGION 

A.    PRINCIPLES  :  THE  IDEA  AND  ORIGIN  OF  RELIGION 

PHILOSOPHY,  understood  as  reflexion  on  our  ultimate 
ideas,  is  almost  as  old  as  religion,  and  began  to  be  the 
moment  man  consciously  enquired  concerning  beliefs  that  had 
unconsciously  arisen,  What  do  they  mean  ?  He  had  to  live 
much  longer,  forget  much  and  learn  more,  before  he  could 
ask,  What  do  I  mean  by  my  beliefs  ?  A  yet  vaster  revolu- 
tion of  time  and  mind  had  to  happen  before  he  framed  the 
questions  :  What  do  my  beliefs  mean  to  me  ?  and  have  their 
many  changes  of  form  and  setting  since  the  days  of  my 
youth  left  them  still  the  old  beliefs  and  still  mine  ?  But  all 
these  might  be  discussed  as  problems  in  religious  philosophy 
without  ever  raising  the  distinctive  questions  in  the  philoso- 
phy of  religion.  The  two  are  distinguished  thus :  the  former 
is  concerned  with  religious  ideas,  but  the  latter  with  concrete 
religion ;  the  one  deals  with  beliefs,  their  basis,  psychological 
genesis,  and  intellectual  forms,  but  the  other  enquires  why 
religion  as  an  objective  fact  and  living  organism  has  ap- 
peared, and  how  it  has  behaved ;  what  are  its  sources  and 
elements,  its  ideas  and  customs  ;  what  its  dependency  on  man 
and  on  environment ;  what  functions  it  has  fulfilled,  and  with 
what  results,  and  for  what  reasons  in  personal,  tribal,  national, 
and  collective  history.  It  recognizes  religion  as  a  universal 
fact  which  has  to  be  construed  through  what  is  universal  in 
human  nature ;  and  it  seeks  to  discover  the  forces  and  the 
factors  that  modify  the  universal  fact  into  the  infinite  variety 
of  forms  it  assumes  in  time  and  place,  and  to  determine  the 

186 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   THE    RELIGIONS  187 

worth  of  these  modifications.  Its  scope  is  therefore  in.mense, 
and  its  problem  intricate,  but  one  thing  it  must  never  do, 
lose  hold  upon  reality,  the  phenomena  to  be  explained,  or 
forget  the  obligation  that  lies  upon  it  of  finding  for  them  a 
rational  explanation. 


§  I.    The  Phenomena  to  be  Studied:  the  Religions 

i.  The  philosophy  of  Religion  starts  with  man,  and  sees 
that  whenever  and  wherever  he  appears  it  is  as  a  voyager 
between  life  and  death,  conscious  of  the  mystery  in  which 
his  voyage  begins  and  the  tragedy  in  which  it  ends.  It 
never  finds  him  without  religious  ideas  or  forms  appropriate 
for  their  expression.  These  belong  to  his  most  solemn  acts 
and  the  customs  by  which  they  are  sanctioned.  If  we  try 
to  make  the  races  of  man,  with  their  most  transcendental 
ideals  and  governing  enthusiasms,  pass  before  the  eye  which 
sees  in  solitude,  we  shall  find  that  what  we  have  called  up  is 
a  vision  impressive  above  all  others  to  the  imagination.  For 
we  have  summoned  man  in  all  his  tribes  and  in  all  his  ages  to 
defile  before  us  in  ghostly  procession,  bearing  his  supreme 
hopes  and  fears,  aspirations  and  agonies,  dreams  of  deity, 
death,  and  bliss  as  they  are  incorporated  in  his  religions. 
We  may  begin  with  what  is  esteemed  their  lowest  and  most 
primitive  form,  religion  as  interpreted  and  realized  for  us  by 
the  living  savage.  Anthropology  has  painted  for  us  a  picture 
of  him  which  is  as  rich  and  complex  as  it  is  real  and  full ;  and 
has  made  us  familiar  with  his  weapons,  his  ceremonies,  his 
ideas,  his  hopes,  and  fears.  It  may  have  tempted  us  indeed 
to  exaggerate  the  rudeness,  the  audacious  monstrosity  of  his 
thought  and  mythology  ;  but  one  thing  it  has  made  conspicu- 
ously evident,  viz.,  the  place  his  religious  beliefs  occupied  in 
his  mind,  and  the  space  his  religious  customs  filled  in  his  life. 
How  great  these  were  may  be  discovered  if  we  compare  his 


1 88        THE    MATERIAL   AND    SPIRITUAL    OUTFITS 

total  outfit  for    life    in  two  respects,  the    material    and    the 
spiritual,  with  our  own. 

(a)  As  to  his  material  outfit.  This  is  represented  by  a 
rude  weapon  or  two,  a  piece  of  flint  sharpened  to  act  as  knife 
or  spear-head ;  and  possibly,  if  he  be  very  highly  gifted,  to 
these  may  be  added  a  bow  and  arrow,  a  fig-leaf  round  his 
middle,  or  the  fat  of  some  slaughtered  animal  with  which  he 
has  been  wont  to  daub  his  body,  the  scalp  of  an  enemy  he 
has  worn  at  his  girdle,  the  skull  of  a  beast  he  has  slain  and 
used  either  as  ornament  or  as  weapon.  If  he  dwells  on  an 
island  or  by  the  sea,  he  may  have  fashioned  and  sailed  some 
curious  canoe ;  and  if  he  has  learned  to  love  rhythmic  sounds, 
he  may  have  contrived  to  form  out  of  a  piece  of  wood  and  a 
skin  some  instrument  from  which  he  can  produce  them. 
These,  or  something  less  than  these,  represent  the  whole  of 
his  material  equipment ;  all  the  property  he  has  either  to 
carry  with  him  to  the  tomb,  or  to  leave  behind  to  his  family 
or  his  tribe.  On  the  other  hand,  civilized  man  is  found 
clothed,  housed,  fed  by  the  products  of  all  lands ;  able  to 
travel  over  earth  and  sea  with  the  speed  but  without  the 
fatigues  of  a  winged  creature.  He  dwells  in  cities  adorned 
with  art,  enriched  by  commerce,  absorbed  in  industries,  gov- 
erned by  law,  illumined  by  history,  informed  by  literature, 
comforted  by  religion,  pervaded  by  a  thousand-handed  charity 
and  watched  by  an  even-handed  justice  which  will  not  allow 
the  aggressor  to  go  unpunished.  He  can  look  with  eyes  that 
see  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  can  listen  with  ears  that 
hear  the  faintest  murmur  amid  far-off  peoples  of  war  or 
disaster,  prosperity  or  distress,  the  suspicion  that  alienates 
man  or  the  trust  that  unites  them.  If  now  we  compare  the 
two,  could  more  utter  or  more  pathetic  destitution  than  that 
of  the  savage  be  conceived  ?  The  multitude  of  things  that 
have  become  not  simply  conveniences  but  necessities  to  the 
civilized  man,  be  he  rich  or  be  he  poor,  which  are  completely 
unknown  to  the  primitive,  makes  one  feel  the  distance  that 


OF   MAN,    SAVAGE   AND   CIVILIZED  189 

lies  between  the  simple  state  of  nature  and  the  wealth  of  the 
poorest  rustic  that  ever  followed  a  plough,  or  was  carried 
unlamented  to  his  grave. 

(/3)  Let  us  now  place,  in  contrast  with  their  material,  their 
respective  spiritual  outfits.  Here,  indeed,  the  wealth  of  the 
savage  bewilders.  His  ideas  as  to  ghosts  and  gods  are  so 
multitudinous  that  every  object  he  handles,  everything  he 
sees,  has  within  it  a  hidden  deity.  Life,  death,  and  the 
future  speak  to  him  as  to  us ;  but,  with  a  more  sensitive 
imagination  than  we  can  boast,  he  guards  his  life  by  charms 
and  rites  from  those  last  terrors  which  cast  upon  him  so 
dark  a  shadow.  Souls  he  finds  everywhere  and  in  every- 
thing ;  and  so  he  can  hardly  speak  without  weaving  the 
phenomena  of  Nature  into  poetry.  We  have  only  to  recall 
some  of  the  many  forms  employed  to  explain  his  beliefs  in 
order  to  show  how  complex  they  seem  to  us,  whatever  may 
have  been  their  cogent  reasonableness  to  himself.  We  have 
his  legends  construed  in  the  terms  now  of  a  solar,  and  now 
of  a  floral  mythology.  In  the  one  case  sun  and  moon  and 
stars  are  made  the  ancestors  of  all  his  gods  and  ours  ;  in 
the  other  case,  these  are  displaced  in  favour  of  trees  and 
plants.  Then  we  have  an  animal  mythology,  with  varied 
legends  of  animal  ancestry,  and  theories  of  animal  and 
human  kinship.  Then  we  have  a  cosmogonic  mythology, 
theories  as  to  how  Nature  came  to  be,  what  the  eclipse  sig- 
nified, and  how  the  earthquake  was  caused.  And  we  have 
an  historical  or  ancestral  mythology,  where  the  memory  of 
the  tribe  has  been  turned  into  a  chronicle  of  divine  names 
and  a  calendar  of  persons  worthy  of  divine  honours.  And 
though  these  schools  and  types  of  mythology  may  signify 
much  more  as  to  the  ingenuity  of  the  civilized  man  attempt- 
ing to  read  the  savage  mind  than  they  signify  as  to  the 
world  which  the  savage  actually  knows  ;  yet  the  very  fact 
that  such  theories  have  been  possible  shows  the  amount 
of  material  that  has  to  be  interpreted,  and  the  space  which 


1 9o  CIVILIZED    MAN    STILL   RELIGIOUS 

spiritual  beliefs  fill  in  the  savage  life.  For  his  customs  are 
as  full  of  belief  as  are  his  tales :  —  his  institutions,  the  sacred 
persons,  the  rain-makers,  the  wizards,  the  doctors  he  trusts ; 
the  sacred  things  like  trees  and  rivers,  bones  and  stones  he 
fears  ;  the  sacred  places  he  frequents,  like  cairns  and  moun- 
tains, forests  and  wells ;  the  cave  which  he  turns  into  a 
tomb  and  the  grove  he  rails  off  as  a  home  for  his  dead ;  the 
charms  on  which  he  depends  for  help  against  the  malign 
forces  that  dwell  in  nature  or  act  in  man,  all  express  the 
same  thing  —  the  wealth  of  his  spiritual  outfit  compared 
with  the  appalling  poverty  of  his  material  possessions. 
This  is  the  more  remarkable  as  civilized  man  is  marked 
by  a  contrast  of  the  reverse  order.  His  spiritual  world  — 
however  rich  in  intellectual  formulas  or  aesthetic  adornment, 
in  ceremonial  and  musical  expression  —  is  like  the  wilder- 
ness, in  which  the  rose  does  not  blossom,  standing  over 
against  the  prodigal  luxuriance  of  the  material  comforts  that 
make  up  so  large  a  part  of  his  life.  It  were  dangerous  to 
draw  too  sharp  an  antithesis;  but  if  we  judge  from  the 
ethnographic  evidence,  we  may  say  that  the  savage,  in 
contrast  to  the  civilized  man,  is  more  occupied  with  super- 
natural and  ideal  than  with  natural  and  material  things. 
Nature  to  him  is  of  spirit  all  compact,  and  even  the  life  we 
think  so  low  and  brutal  has  in  its  dreams  and  fears  and 
crude  beliefs  the  stores  of  a  large  imagination. 

2.  This  absorption  of  the  primitive  man  in  religion  is  no 
mere  accident ;  on  the  contrary  it  means  that  the  nascent 
mind  in  him  feels  its  kinship  with  the  divine,  gropes  after  it, 
and  the  more  it  gropes  rises  the  higher  in  its  manhood ;  and 
that  it  can  only  begin  freely  and  intelligently  to  handle  mat- 
ter when  it  has  in  some  measure  clarified  its  outlook  towards 
spirit.  But  if  we  desire  to  see  how  little  the  increase  of 
intercourse  with  material  things  signifies  any  growth  out  of 
religion,  we  have  only  to  turn  our  eyes  on  the  peoples  who 
can  boast  an  historical  and  ordered  being.  Let  us  go  back 


VISION    OF  THE    RELIGIONS   IN    HISTORY         191 

to  our  most  ancient  civilization,  unbury  the  temples  of  Egypt, 
disinter  her  cities,  rifle  her  tombs,  unswathe  her  mummies, 
and  read  her  hieroglyphs ;  and  what  do  we  find  ?  That  the 
thing  that  made  her  the  mother  of  the  arts,  that  bade  her 
build  her  pyramids  and  her  temples,  that  forced  her  to  pre- 
serve her  dead  that  the  disembodied  soul  might  on  its  return 
find  again  its  ancient  home,  was  belief  :  faith  in  the  life  that 
never  died  —  her  religion.  Or  let  us  take  the  greatest  nation 
of  merchants  the  world  has  ever  known,  the  men  who  first 
learned  how  to  navigate  the  pathless  sea,  to  colonize  for 
commerce,  to  weave  the  mysterious  signs  of  the  alphabet 
into  written  speech ;  and  how  do  we  trace  their  wanderings 
in  search  of  gain  ?  By  the  votive  tablets  which  the  Phoeni- 
cian everywhere  set  up  and  left  behind  in  the  praise  of  his 
gods.  Or  let  us  move  eastward  till  we  enter  the  old  Meso- 
potamian  valley,  dig  into  its  shapeless  and  melancholy 
mounds  and  dig  out  its  winged  bull  or  its  man-headed  lion, 
discover  and  decipher  its  cuneiform  inscriptions  ;  and  there 
read  the  history  of  its  wars,  the  ambitions  and  the  achieve- 
ments of  its  kings,  the  myths  and  the  legends  of  its  people  ; 
and  what  have  we  discovered  ?  That  the  thing  all  lived  by 
and  lived  for  was  religion ;  kings  ruled  by  favour  of  the 
gods,  and  delighted  in  the  victories  that  did  them  honour. 
Or  let  us  go  further  eastward  till  we  reach  India,  and  what 
is  the  idea  that  there  penetrates  everything,  that  fills  all 
nature,  that  builds  up  and  organizes  all  society,  but  the  idea 
of  an  omnipresent  Deity,  who,  though  impersonal,  is  yet 
impersonated  in  all  things,  the  bosom  out  of  which  all  came, 
and  into  which  all  return  ?  Let  us  move  still  eastward  till  we 
come  to  China,  and  there  we  find  man  held  in  the  lean  yet 
iron  fingers  of  his  dead  ancestors;  but  all  his  ancestors  - 
with  the  spirits  that  fill  the  heaven  above,  and  people  the 
earth  below  —  speak  to  him  of  one  thing  —  the  religion  which 
the  people  did  not  make,  but  which  has  made  the  people. 
And  if  we  think  that  bv  returning  to  the  saner  West  and 


i92  RELIGION    THE    MOTHER   OF   ORDER 

investigating  its  sanest  and  sunniest  peoples  we  may  escape 
from  this  all-environing  belief,  what  do  we  find  ?  That  the 
poetry,  the  art,  the  philosophy  of  Greece  live  and  move  and 
have  their  being  in  its  religion  ;  and  without  it  these  could 
not  have  been  either  what  they  were  to  the  Greeks  or  what 
they  are  to  us.  And  did  not  Rome  conceive  her  Empire 
to  be  so  much  the  creation  of  the  religious  idea  that  her 
emperors  came  to  be  honoured  as  deities  ?  The  gods  built 
and  ruled  the  city,  and  the  city  achieved  her  greatness  by 
the  favour  of  the  gods ;  nay,  she  was  herself  imperial  and 
eternal  because  she  was  divine.  And  what  does  this  ubiquity 
of  religion,  with  its  all-penetrative  and  commanding  action, 
mean  ?  Not  simply  that  man  possesses  it,  but  that  it  pos- 
sesses man,  and  is  the  mother  of  all  his  order,  all  his  arts, 
and  all  his  architectonic  ideas.  Till  religion,  therefore,  is 
explained  he  is  inexplicable,  and  only  as  it  is  purified  and 
strengthened  can  he  be  made  perfect. 

3.  To  speak  of  religion  as  the  mother  of  our  architectonic 
ideas  may  seem  to  many  only  a  form  of  vain  and  sounding 
words,  yet  what  they  state  is  the  sober  truth.  The  thing 
that  anthropology  has  made  most  certain  is  this  —  that  primi- 
tive religion  is  not  the  apotheosis  of  accident,  the  child  of 
nightmare  and  imaginative  terror,  but  the  organizing  idea 
of  society,  the  force  which  holds  the  whole  social  system 
together,  builds  it  up,  and  gives  to  it  its  character  and  unity. 
Order  is  created  because  customs  are  established  as  religious, 
and  are  enforced  by  sanctions  too  dread  to  be  despised. 
Law  is  divine,  the  oath  is  made  sacred,  and  certain  acts  are 
stamped  as  crimes  that  must  be  punished  by  being  conceived 
as  violations  of  a  will  too  awful  to  be  corrupted  and  too 
inexorable  to  be  defied.  The  forms  of  early  society  which 
are  denoted  by  the  uncouth  terms  which  we  owe  to  anthro- 
pology—  taboo,  totemism,  fetishism  —  are  the  names  of  so 
many  chapters  in  the  early  history  of  religion.  By  religious 
customs  kinship  is  defined;  through  them  kingship  is  estab- 


LAW   AND   CUSTOM    ITS   CREATION  193 

lished ;  by  them  the  family,  the  clan,  or  the  tribe,  is  delim- 
ited ;  and  because  of  them  the  civil  institution  takes  shape 
or  finds  its  root  and  reason.  And  as  it  is  in  the  most  primi- 
tive societies,  so  it  is  also  in  the  most  stable,  progressive,  and 
civilized.  The  marvellous  continuance  of  China  is  the  fit 
handiwork  of  the  one  religion  which  can  be  truly  described 
as  "  ancestor-worship,"  which  has  saved  the  present  by  caus- 
ing its  indefectible  loyalty  to  the  past.  The  social  system 
of  India,  the  wonderful  order  of  caste,  so  hateful  and  so  little 
intelligible  to  the  European,  is  but  the  articulation  of  racial 
pride,  enforced  by  sanctions,  preserved  by  customs,  guarded 
by  rites,  consecrated  by  associations,  which  are  all  religious. 
The  ancient  empires  of  the  East  —  Egypt,  Assyria,  Persia  — 
were,  in  a  sense,  missionary  associations,  the  victorious  con- 
queror being  but  the  potent  apostle  of  his  god.  The  great- 
est personal  Empire  was  the  shortest  lived,  it  died  with  the 
man  who  made  it,  for  with  Alexander  its  only  principle  of  life 
went  out.  The  apotheosis  of  the  Roman  State  expressed 
the  idea  that  organized  the  Roman  Empire  ;  the  tendencies 
that  undeified  the  state  dissolved  its  dominion.  The  societies 
that  live  longest  and  exercise  the  widest  sovereignty  are  those 
which  the  religious  idea  has  created  and  inspired.  The 
Church  of  Buddha  is  a  remarkable  example  of  existence  con- 
tinued amid  diffusion,  unbroken  by  dispersal  through  peoples 
of  alien  blood  and  speech,  unhurt  by  the  downfall  of  friendly 
or  the  triumph  of  hostile  states.  The  word  of  Mohammed 
laid  hold  upon  the  Arab  tribes,  divided  by  immemorial  hates 
and  centuries  of  bloody  feuds,  and  fused  them  into  a  nation 
of  a  single  passion  and  irresistible  power.  Translated  into 
the  soil  of  another  and  most  ungenial  race,  the  same  word 
built  the  throne  of  the  Turk  in  Europe  and  the  Moghul  in 
Asia.  Religion  remains  thus,  in  all  its  forms  and  ages,  a 
creative  and  architectonic  force,  a  power  all  the  more  abso- 
lute that  it  is  moral  and  intellectual  rather  than  material, 
economical,  or  military. 

P.   C.    K.  13 


i94  THE   SCIENCES   OF   NATURE   AND   MAN 


§  II.  Religion  as  Universal  is  Native  to  Man 

From  this  rapid  survey  of  religion,  both  in  its  primitive  and 
historical  forms,  as  of  all  facts  the  most  universal  and  dis- 
tinctively human,  and  as  of  all  factors  of  movement  and  of 
social  change  the  most  potent  and  determinative,  two  or 
three  important  conclusions  follow : 

i.  Science  cultivates  no  field  so  necessary  to  the  complete 
knowledge  of  man  as  that  occupied  by  his  religions.  The 
circle  of  the  sciences  concerned  with  the  interpretation  of 
nature  and  man  is  immense,  and  it  is  all  the  fuller  of  know- 
ledge and  of  meaning  that  no  single  science  stands  alone, 
but  that  each  depends  immediately  or  remotely  upon  all  the 
rest.  In  their  presence  two  things  fill  me  with  wonder  — 
the  immensity  of  the  field  they  cover,  and  the  inadequacy 
of  them  all  combined,  in  spite  of  their  coherence  and  their 
unity,  to  the  interpretation  of  man  as  at  once  the  interpreter 
and  the  interpretation  of  the  universe.  If  we  think  of  it,  is 
not  the  point  where  these  co-ordinated  sciences  stop  even 
more  remarkable  than  the  point  where  they  begin  and  the 
goal  whither  they  tend  ?  They  start  with  those  mathematics 
which  are  pure  metaphysics,  those  ideas  which  the  reason 
cannot  think  without  or  think  away,  and  which  underlie  all 
its  attempts  at  the  interpretation  of  Nature  as  being  in  space. 
And  then  from  this  they  rise  through  the  more  concrete 
sciences  —  physical,  chemical,  geological,  biological  —  till  they 
terminate  in  man  as  a  social  and  economical  being.  The 
field  is  vast  and  crowded  with  marvels ;  but  what  is  more 
marvellous  than  even  its  extent  is  its  limitation.  What  is 
most  cardinal  and  characteristic  in  man  and  his  creations 
remains  untouched,  or  is  touched  only  at  a  point  remote  from 
the  centre,  and  so  distant  from  the  enquirer  that  he  cannot 
so  see  it  as  to  bring  it  within  the  terms  of  anything  that  can 


195 

be  called  scientific  knowledge  or  discussion.  Science  indeed 
attempts  to  touch  religion  where  it  appears  as  savage  custom 
and  belief ;  but,  as  we  are  about  to  argue,  these  are  for  all 
scientific  purposes  much  less  significant  than  the  historical 
religions ;  while  the  material  they  supply  is  less  capable  of 
judicial  sifting  and  verification  than  the  material,  —  monu- 
mental, institutional,  literary,  artistic,  —  available  in  history. 
There  are  indeed  special  sciences  that  cultivate  these  and 
cognate  fields  ;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  study  religious  art  and 
archaeology,  or  historical  and  literary  criticism,  and  quite 
another  thing  to  study  the  religion  that  produced  the  art 
and  made  the  literature.  And  apart  from  the  religion  its 
creations  cannot  be  appreciated ;  but  to  understand  religion 
man  must  be  understood,  especially  as  regards  those  facul- 
ties, real  or  potential,  by  virtue  of  which  he  is  its  organ  and 
bearer.  Now  the  only  science  which  has  seriously  concerned 
itself  with  this  question  is  anthropology,  which,  like  a  new 
and  more  formal  comparative  anatomy,  or  a  sort  of  psycho- 
logical palaeontology,  takes  up  the  dried  and  broken  and 
scattered  bones  of  savage  myth,  ritual,  and  institutions  ;  and 
then,  with  the  benevolent  condescension  which  marks  the 
child  of  culture  when  he  deals  with  those  lower  civilizations 
out  of  which  his  own  was  born,  it  attempts  to  discover  for 
us  the  process  by  which  spiritual  ideas  first  entered  the 
primitive  mind,  and  then  organized  themselves  into  the  cus- 
toms and  the  myths  which  are  the  originals  of  our  civilized 
religions.  Yet  when  it  has  spoken  its  last  word,  does  it  not 
leave  unexplained  the  mystery  of  thought  within  the  savage 
that  compelled  him  to  make  and  follow  the  custom,  to  think 
and  create  the  myth  ?  The  man  is  more  than  the  environ- 
ment; it  never  could  have  acted  on  him  as  it  is  supposed  to 
have  clone,  or  he  have  drawn  from  it  what  he  did,  had  he 
not  been  man.  More  wonderful  than  the  rudeness  ol  his 
tools  was  the  need  he  felt  for  them,  how  he  made  them,  and 
what  in  his  hands  they  accomplished  ;  more  remarkable  than 


196  RELIGION    NECESSARY  TO   MAN 

the  extravagance  of  his  beliefs  was  their  existence,  and  they, 
like  the  tools,  existed  because  of  him.  He,  by  the  marvel- 
lous alchemy  of  his  thought,  distilled  them  from  his  experi- 
ence ;  and  they  became  the  strong  drink  of  his  mind,  now 
intoxicating  and  now  inspiring,  yet  ever  signifying  that  he 
had,  by  transfiguring  nature  into  spirit,  humanized  himself. 
And  his  maddest  dreams  have  within  them  the  reasonable 
soul  of  a  potential  manhood.  It  does  not  become  us  to 
marvel  at  the  grotesque  things  he  said  and  believed  at  the 
supreme  moment  when  the  reason  within  him  awoke,  and  he 
looked  with  the  eyes  of  a  dazed  and  perturbed  imagination 
at  the  world  without.  For  our  own  speech  even  now  tends 
to  become  bewildered  when  we  stand  in  presence  of  the 
mysteries  of  being,  but  are  we  to  cease  to  think  because  the 
expression  of  our  thought  is  inadequate  ?  And  is  the  scien- 
tific way  to  belittle  thought  through  the  inadequacy  of  its 
vehicle,  or  to  read  the  vehicle  through  the  reality  of  the 
thought?  For  it  must  have  been  some  strong  instinct  in  the 
savage  that  moved  him  to  the  creation  of  these  naive  beliefs 
and  rites  which  we  seek  so  curiously  to  explain.  And  this 
means  that  it  was  not  the  Nature  without,  but  the  nature 
within  the  man  and  behind  the  beliefs,  that  was  the  really 
significant  and  causative  nature. 

2.  Religion  is  so  essential  to  man  that  he  cannot  escape 
from  it.  It  besets  him,  penetrates,  holds  him  even  against 
his  will.  The  proof  of  its  necessity  is  the  spontaneity  of  its 
existence.  It  comes  into  being  without  any  man  willing  it, 
or  any  man  making  it ;  and  as  it  began  so  it  continues.  Few 
men  could  give  a  reason  for  their  belief,  and  the  curious  thing 
is  that  \vhen  it  is  attempted  the  reasons  are,  as  a  rule,  less 
rational  than  the  beliefs  themselves,  and  are  but  rarely 
possessed  of  a  ratiocinative  cogency.  Its  strength  on  the 
collective  side  lies  in  its  institutions  and  usages  ;  but  on  the 
personal  side  in  its  intellectual  ideas  and  moral  ideals.  Men 
bear  its  institutions  while  they  believe  its  truth  ;  and  no  social 


GOVERNS   THOUGHT   AND   ACTION  197 

or  political  revolution  is  possible  anywhere  save  by  those 
who  have  revolted  from  the  beliefs  on  which  the  society  or 
the  State  has  been  constituted.  In  the  hour  of  the  revolt 
individual  men  may  will  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  reli- 
gion ;  but  instinct  is  stronger  than  will,  and  religion  in  some 
form  both  of  idea  and  usage  returns,  be  it  as  the  memory  of 
a  dead  woman,  as  with  Mill  or  Comte,  or  as  an  abstraction 
like  Humanity  —  le  grand  Etrc  —  loved  of  the  Positivist,  or 
as  the  Unconscious  adored  by  the  Pessimist,  or  as  the  Un- 
known affirmed  by  the  logic  and  worshipped  by  the  awe  of 
the  Agnostic.  And  what  man  is  to  religion  he  becomes  to 
history.  It  is  in  his  religion  that  he  knows  himself  man,  and 
through  it  that  he  realizes  manhood.  Like  a  subtle  spirit  it 
pervades  his  whole  being,  and  controls  both  his  personal  and 
social  development.  His  first  attempts  to  interpret  Nature 
are  governed  by  religious  ideas,  and  from  his  last  attempts 
they  are  inseparable.  He  must,  for  he  is  rational,  think,  and 
what  is  the  thought  of  a  reasonable  being  but  a  factor  which 
relates  him  to  the  Infinite  and  the  Eternal  ?  The  society  man 
creates,  embodies  his  religious  idea,  and  the  same  idea  orders 
his  history.  Language  in  all  its  terms  is  instinct  with  reli- 
gious feeling,  and  thought  in  its  whole  movement  is  governed 
by  the  religious  problem.  In  theology  philosophy  begins, 
and  in  theology  science  ends,  all  the  more  that  it  may  refuse 
to  name  the  very  notions  which  transcend  its  sphere  and  yet 
are  implicit  in  all  its  premisses  and  will  not  be  excluded  from 
its  conclusions.  For  what  is  the  Agnostic  but  a  man  who 
confesses  that  there  are  ideas  which  he  will  not  name  but 
cannot  escape  from  —  ideas  that  he  must  disguise  in  order 
that  he  may  reason  concerning  them  ?  These  ideas  beget 
the  ideals  which  have  an  infinite  meaning  for  man,  for  they 
arc  born  of  religion  and  for  ever  cause  religion  to  be  born 
ane\v  within  him. 

3.    If  religion  be,  as  it  were,  so  built  into  man  as  to  be  the 
heart  of  his  being,  it  follows  that  the  agencies  which  work 


198  AS  ARCHITECTONICAL   IDEA 

most  for  its  amelioration  serve  man  in  the  highest  possible 
degree.  Genius  is  varied,  and  can  accomplish  great  things  in 
all  the  provinces  and  spheres  of  thought  and  life.  In  art  it 
can  give  us  the  things  of  beauty  that  are  joys  for  ever,  and 
that  govern  the  taste  of  all  later  ages ;  but  art  is  not  the 
whole  of  life.  Sensuous  beauty  and  moral  uncleanliness 
have  before  now  lived  together  without  any  feeling  of 
mutual  dislike  or  disgust ;  but  in  the  course  of  ages  the 
moral  uncleanliness  proves  mightier  to  harm  than  the  sen- 
suous beauty  to  bless.  Genius  in  literature  may  create  the 
classical  forms  that  educate  all  later  intellects,  but  the  most 
cultivated  literary  societies  have  often  been  cursed  by  the 
most  absolute  selfishness.  In  music  the  imagination  of  the 
master  can  blend  the  harmony  of  sweet  sounds  in  the  opera 
or  oratorio  that  speaks  to  man  in  the  language  of  the  gods. 
But  the  delight  music  may  give  is  of  the  sense  rather  than  of 
the  soul.  Religion,  on  the  other  hand,  affects  and  controls 
all  these.  To  it  art,  pagan  or  Christian,  owes  it  noblest  sub- 
jects and  highest  inspirations.  For  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten 
that  art  has  everywhere  lived  and  moved  and  had  its  being 
in  religion.  This  is  even  more  true  of  classical  than  of 
mediaeval  art,  for  it  was  at  once  a  more  adequate  and  a 
more  refined  expression  of  the  religious  ideal.  Pheidias 
helped  to  spiritualize  the  religion  of  Greece  in  a  sense  and 
degree  that  has  no  counterpart  in  the  work  of  Raphael  for 
Italy ;  and  if  we  do  not  read  Greek  art  through  the  Greek 
idea  that  the  Beautiful  was  the  most  fit  symbol,  if  not  indeed 
the  very  synonym,  for  the  Divine,  we  shall  never  appreciate 
its  nature,  or  understand  what  it  achieved.  From  religion, 
too,  literature  has  received  the  problems  which  have  given  it 
dignity,  the  spirit  which  has  breathed  into  it  sublimity,  and 
the  soul  which  has  been  its  life.  Without  his  mythology 
Homer  would  have  made  no  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  ail 
time.  /Eschylus  would  have  given  us  no  tragedy,  Plato  no 
philosophy,  Uante  no  Divine  Comedy,  Milton  no  Paradise 


RELIGION    HAS    ITS   PROBLEMS  199 

Lost  or  Regained,  without  the  motive  and  the  material  which 
religion  supplied.  And  these  are  but  typical  cases,  for  to 
illustrate  the  point  as  it  might  be  illustrated  would  be  to 
marshal  the  masterpieces  from  the  literatures  of  all  peoples 
and  times.  And,  finally,  without  religion  music  would  lose 
most  of  its  power  to  charm,  for  it  elevates  just  as  it  breathes 
the  soul  of  religion,  and  is  the  minister  of  the  religious  emo- 
tions. The  religious  is  thus,  as  we  have  said,  the  architec- 
tonic idea  of  society,  the  commanding  idea  of  conduct,  the 
imperial  idea  of  all  our  being  and  all  our  thinking,  and  he 
who  can  create  its  most  perfect  form  is  our  supreme  bene- 
factor —  the  foremost  person  in  all  our  history. 

If,  then,  religion  be  to  such  a  degree  the  force  which  makes 
for  order  in  history,  what  are  the  philosophical  problems  it 
formulates  for  us  ?  These  are  indeed  a  multitude,  but  they 
may  be  said  to  reduce  themselves  to  three  main  classes  : 
First,  those  connected  with  the  nature,  the  origin,  and  the 
permanence  of  religion  as  such,  i.e.  the  religious  idea  with- 
out reference  to  any  of  its  specific  forms.  What  is  it? 
How  did  it  come  to  be  ?  Why  does  it  continue  to  be  ? 
Secondly,  those  connected  with  the  rise,  the  peculiar  quali- 
ties and  characters,  and  the  distinctive  behaviour  of  the 
special  religions.  How  are  we  to  conceive  and  explain  the 
many  forms  the  idea  has  assumed  ?  To  what  causes  do 
they  owe  their  being?  What  forces  —  physical,  personal, 
political  —  have  \vorked  for  their  modification  ?  Thirdly, 
those  connected  with  the  historical  action  and  generic 
significance  of  the  particular  religions ;  i.e.  their  merits, 
measured  by  some  standard  which  philosophy  may  judge 
adequate,  as  systems  embodying  an  ideal  and  working  for 
its  realization  in  the  actual.  What  gives  their  worth  to 
local  religions  ?  Is  it  enough  that  they  have  a  history  and 
serve  their  peoples?  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  a  universal 
or  absolute  religion  ?  In  what  relation  do  the  particular 
religions  stand  to  each  other  and  to  the  idea  of  religion  in 


200  HOW   RELIGION    IS   TO    BE    CONCEIVED 

general?  These  are  large  questions,  and  we  shall  in  this 
chapter  confine  ourselves  to  the  two  prior  and  fundamental 
points  —  (i)  the  idea  and  origin  of  religion;  (2)  the  causes 
of  variation  in  religions.  The  other  point,  as  raising  other 
issues,  will  be  better  discussed  in  a  later  chapter. 

§  III.    The  Idea  and  Origin  of  Religion 

I.  Religion,  so  far  as  it  is  a  matter  of  philosophical  investi- 
gation, has  a  twofold  sense  —  a  subjective  and  an  objective, 
or  a  personal  and  a  collective,  or  an  ideal  and  an  historical. 
As  subjective  it  denotes  certain  thoughts,  ideas,  feelings,  and 
tendencies  which  belong  to  man  as  man.  As  objective  it 
denotes  the  beliefs,  the  legends,  the  mythologies,  the  sacred 
books  and  creeds  in  which  the  thought  is  articulated ;  the 
ritual,  ceremonial,  acts  or  institutions  of  worship  in  which  the 
feeling  is  embodied ;  the  customs  or  laws  by  which  the  acts 
are  regulated  and  sanctioned ;  and  the  practices,  conventions, 
and  social  judgments  by  which  the  tendencies  are  developed 
and  enforced.  A  provisional  definition  might  therefore  run 
somewhat  thus:  —  Religion  is,  subjectively,  man's  conscious- 
ness of  relation  to  suprasensible  Being;  and,  objectively,  the 
beliefs,  the  customs,  the  rites,  and  the  institutions  which 
express  and  incorporate  this  consciousness.  But  it  may  be 
necessary  to  say  something  more  in  explanation  of  both  sides 
of  this  definition. 

(i.)  As  to  the  subjective  side,  what  is  this  consciousness? 
Can  it  be  resolved  into  any  single  faculty  or  the  function 
of  any  faculty,  perception  of  the  Infinite,  intuition,  or  faith  ? 
Is  it  an  intellectual,  an  emotional,  or  an  ethical  consciousness  ? 
Religion  has,  indeed,  been  conceived  now  as  an  act  or  state  of 
knowledge,  now  as  an  act  or  state  of  feeling,  now  as  an  act 
or  state  of  conscience.  As  thought  or  knowledge,  it  is  a  sort 
of  provisional  philosophy;  as  feeling,  it  is  a  more  or  less 
inchoate  mysticism,  a  sense  of  dependence  on  Nature  or 
natural  forces  or  the  Absolute ;  as  a  state  of  conscience,  it 


DEFINITIONS   CRITICIZED  201 

has  been  resolved  into  a  high  morality,  again  into  morality 
touched  with  emotion  ;  and  still  again,  into  a  categorical 
imperative  apprehended  as  a  Divine  command.  But  the 
religious  consciousness  is  too  rich  to  be  represented  by  any 
single  element  in  the  conscious  life  of  man.  It  is  neither 
knowledge,  whether  described  as  intuition  or  thought ;  nor 
feeling,  whether  conceived  as  sense  of  dependence  or  ad- 
miration ;  nor  conscience,  whether  as  a  sense  of  obligation  or 
as  an  organized  and  externalized  authority.  It  is  no  one  of 
these,  yet  it  contains  within  it  all  these,  for  it  is  a  conscious- 
ness which  includes  the  whole  energy  of  man  as  reasonable 
spirit.  There  cannot  be  religion  without  knowledge,  for  faith 
and  knowledge  are  rather  a  unity  than  a  true  antithesis. 
Faith  is  intellectual,  involves  thought  ;  and  it  is  only  as  man 
conceives  an  object  that  he  can  have  any  conscious  relation 
to  it.  The  Unknown,  as  outside  man's  consciousness,  is  an 
object  neither  of  thought  nor  of  faith  ;  and  so  has  for  him 
no  real  being,  nor  any  relation  to  his  conscious  life.  There 
can,  therefore,  be  no  religion  without  thought,  for  not  to 
think  were  not  to  believe — to  have  nothing  that  could  be 
described  as  either  object  or  article  of  faith.  Nor  can  religion 
exist  without  feeling,  for  all  thought  implies  feeling;  and 
there  can  be  no  feeling  without  thought.  To  be  conscious  of 
emotion  is  to  know  ourselves  as  its  subject,  and  something 
not  ourselves  as  its  cause  or  object ;  and  the  feeling  will  in 
its  quality  correspond  to  the  qualities  which  thought  has 
predicated  of  its  cause.  No  man  can  have  a  feeling  of 
dependence  who  has  not  conceived  himself  as  dependent  on 
something,  or  conceived  Some  One  as  existing  on  whom  he 
depends.  Nor  can  religion  be  apart  from  conscience,  for  con- 
science is  the  unity  of  knowledge  and  feeling,  the  knowledge 
of  the  difference  between  acts  and  the  qualities  of  aets,  and 
the  feeling  of  obligation  to  do  acts  that  are  of  a  given  kind 
or  have  a  certain  quality.  And  so  a  relation  such  as  is 
realized  in  religion  is  exactly  the  kind  that  supplies  con- 


202  RELIGION  A   MUTUAL   RELATION 

science  with  its  law  or  norm.  The  consciousness,  therefore, 
which  knows  itself  related  to  suprasensible  Being  represents 
not  one  faculty,  but  the  whole  exercised  reason — the  concrete 
spirit  reaching  upwards  and  outwards  to  a  spirit  as  concrete 
as  itself. 

(ii.)  Turning  now  to  the  objective  side,  it  is  clear  that  the 
relation  of  which  man  is  conscious  is  conceived  as  mutual, 
and  not  simply  as  one-sided.  The  God  he  thinks  of  is  one 
who  speaks  to  him  as  well  as  one  who  can  be  spoken  to. 
The  mutual  relation  is  therefore  conceived  as  a  mutual 
activity  ;  there  is  reciprocity  between  the  related  persons. 
Man  worships,  but  God  hears  and  sees  and  responds.  While 
man  offers  himself  to  God,  God  communicates  Himself  to 
man.  If  it  were  believed  that  God  ceased  to  be  related  to 
man,  man  would  feel  as  if  he  also  were  without  relation  to 
God.  And  this  implies  an  important  addition  to  the  ideas 
both  of  the  object  who  is  adored  and  the  subject  or  person 
who  adores,  viz.,  the  idea  of  a  law  or  will  which  unifies  the 
two  and  governs  the  relations  which  man,  by  his  usages, 
seeks  to  establish  between  himself  and  the  Deity.  That 
law  or  will  is  the  God  who,  as  immanent  both  in  nature 
and  in  man,  is  their  common  principle  of  unity.  The 
evolution  of  religion  is  not  a  mere  subjective  process 
worked  by  an  unconscious  dialectic  ;  it  is  a  process  in  which 
man's  whole  environment  takes  part.  It  is  due,  as  it  were, 
to  the  converse  of  the  soul  with  Nature — impossible  without 
the  soul  to  speculate,  to  question,  to  argue,  to  infer  ;  but  im- 
possible also  without  an  order  that  impels  the  soul  to  ask,  and 
that  answers  as  much  by  silence  as  by  speech.  And  the  real 
respondent  in  this  controversy  or  discussion  which  provokes 
the  soul  to  the  dialectic  that  becomes  religion,  is  not  nature 
but  God,  the  transcendent  Reason  using  the  terms  of  experi- 
ence to  awaken  the  transcendental  idea.  The  Maker  of  man 
does  not  cease  from  relation  with  the  man  He  made,  and 
He  cannot  be  related  without  exercisincf  influence  over  him. 


IN   IT  BOTH   GOD   AND   MAN   ACTIVE       203 

This  relation  is  one  which  every  philosophy  that  seeks  any 
ideal  aim  or  rational  process  in  this  world  has  recognised. 
The  reason  that  is  in  man  is  one  with  the  universal  Reason  ; 
his  ideals  must  serve  the  order  or  stream  of  tendency  which 
guides  the  systems  of  things  to  which  he  belongs.  To 
conceive  man  and  God  as  so  related  is  to  conceive  the  one 
as  the  form  or  vehicle  in  which  the  Other  lives  and  through 
which  He  speaks.  And  so  to  complete  the  idea  of  the  factors 
that  work  subjectively  for  the  creation  of  religion,  we  must 
not  forget  the  God  who  dwells  in  consciousness  any  more 
than  the  consciousness  which  knows  of  His  indwelling. 

2.  But  the  distinction  between  the  subjective  and  objective 
senses  of  religion  will,  by  being  translated  into  more  concrete 
terms,  bring  us  to  a  new  stage  in  our  argument.  The  equiva- 
lent of  the  subjective  sense  is  man,  conceived  as  reason  or 
spirit,  the  ideal  ego  who  cannot  be  without  thought  and 
cannot  think  without  affirming  Deity.  And  the  equivalents  of 
the  objective  sense  are  the  phenomena,  the  personal,  social 
and  ceremonial  forms  which  embody  his  ideas,  or  constitute 
outward  religion.  Now  if  the  relation  between  these  two  be 
conceived  under  the  category  of  causation,  man  may  be 
regarded  as  the  producer,  religion  as  the  produced  ;  but  this 
needs  to  be  qualified,  as  man  is  not  an  absolute  cause,  but 
conditioned  ;  he  never  acts  in  isolation,  but  ever  as  a  creature 
who  lives  within  the  limits  of  time  and  under  the  stimulus 
of  place.  Yet  the  most  conditioned  cause  retains  its  causal 
functions  and  character ;  and  so  the  subject  must  be  con- 
ceived as  the  generative  agent  in  religion.  If,  again,  the 
relation  be  construed  under  the  category  of  time,  priority  of 
being  must  be  claimed  for  the  subject  through  whose  con- 
sciousness religion  is  realized.  But  the  distinction  is  unreal, 
for  the  moment  man  thinks,  his  thought  is  objectified,  and  it 
exists  for  him  only  as  it  is  an  object.  The  two  things,  sub- 
jective and  objective  religion,  are  then,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
inseparable,  though  it  is  also  true  that  in  the  order  of  thought 


204        ETHNOGRAPHY   NOT  A  PHILOSOPHY 

the  subjective  is  in  being  and  in  action  the  prior,  the  objective 
the  later.  In  other  words,  man  is  before  history  ;  history  is 
in  consequence  of  man;  i.e.,  it  is  the  unfolding  and  expression 
of  potentialities  that  were  latent  within  him,  and  that  have 
been  evoked  in  the  course  of  his  personal  and  collective 
life.  It  is  impossible  indeed  for  history  to  reach  the  first 
man  and  describe  him  as  he  really  was.  He  is,  whether 
understood  as  person  or  as  species,  more  or  less  symbolical, 
a  creature  of  the  imagination,  made  in  order  that  he  may  be 
argued  about.  And  this  is  as  true  of  the  idea  of  the  primi- 
tive state  as  it  is  of  the  idea  of  the  primitive  man,  whether 
with  theology  we  speak  of  the  one  as  Eden  and  of  the  other 
as  Adam,  or  with  science  we  describe  the  primitive  as  a 
savage  state  and  name  the  person  half-man,  half-brute. 
Where  we  cannot  investigate  \ve  must  be  content  to  specu- 
late ;  and  so  all  enquiries  into  the  origin  of  early  beliefs 
and  institutions,  however  disguised  in  archaeology  or  in 
history,  are  really  philosophical.  Our  modern  anthropologies 
are  in  heart  and  essence  as  speculative  as  mediaeval  scholas- 
ticism or  as  any  system  of  ancient  metaphysics.  Indeed, 
the  most  barbarous  metaphysical  jargon  which  has  ever 
been  foisted  upon  patient  thought,  is  that  which  uses  terms 
like  "  taboo,"  "  totem,"  "  fetish,"  "  ghost,"  to  denote  indis- 
criminated  and  even  most  dissimilar  ideas,  which  are  often, 
on  the  most  unsifted  and  dubious  evidence,  attributed,  first, 
to  some  scarcely  known  tribe  ;  then,  by  an  act  of  audacious 
generalization,  to  all  primitive  peoples ;  and,  finally,  to 
aboriginal  man.  There  is  no  region  where  a  healthy  and 
fearless  scepticism  is  more  needed  than  in  the  literature 
which  relates  to  ethnography.  There  is  no  people  so 
difficult  to  understand  and  to  interpret  as  a  savage  people  ; 
there  is  no  field  where  competent  interpreters  are  so  few 
and  so  rare,  where  unlearned  authorities  are  so  many  and 
so  rash,  or  where  testimonies  are  so  contradictory,  or  so 
apt  to  dissolve  under  analysis  into  airy  nothings.  But 


THOUGH   A   PHILOSOPHY   IS   ITS   PREMISS     205 

what  we  deprecate  is  not  the  collection,  the  investigation, 
and  the  co-ordination  of  all  facts  connected  with  the 
habits,  beliefs,  state,  and  affinities  of  savage  peoples  ;  it 
is  the  philosophy  they  may  be  made  to  disguise.  For  the 
explicit  and  reasoned  or  implicit  and  inarticulated  postulate 
of  many  ethnographically  stated  and  illustrated  speculations 
as  to  the  earlier  forms  of  religion,  is  a  doctrine  not  simply 
as  to  the  development  of  man  and  society,  but  as  to  the  kind 
of  being  who  was  to  be  developed,  what  potentialities  he  had, 
and  what  forces  made  him  the  being  he  finally  became.  It 
is  this  doctrine  which  may  both  need  criticism  and  repay  it. 
For  it  does  not  follow  that  the  anthropology  which  is  an 
accurate  description  of  man  in  his  savage  state  is  a  good 
philosophy  of  religion. 

3.  The  point  of  our  criticism  may  become  more  obvious  if 
we  distinguish  the  question  touching  the  subjective  and 
objective  senses  of  religion  from  two  very  different  questions, 
those,  viz.,  as  to  the  source  of  religion,  and  as  to  its  oldest  and 
most  primitive  form.  The  question  as  to  the  source  asks, 
Why  did  man  begin  to  have  a  religion?  but  the  question  as 
to  the  form  enquires,  What  sort  of  religion  had  he  in  the 
beginning?  It  is  possible,  indeed,  to  agree  as  regards  the 
sort  of  religion  man  began  by  having,  and  to  differ  funda- 
mentally as  to  why  and  as  to  how  he  came  by  it.  We  may 
hold  that  in  religion,  as  in  other  things,  the  primitive  were 
the  rudest  and  the  lowest  forms  ;  while  \ve  also  hold  that 
they  owed  their  existence,  low  as  it  was,  to  what  was  highest 
and  most  rational  in  man,  even  as  he  then  was,  reaching 
out  towards  what  was  highest  and  most  reasonable  in  the 
universe.  If  we  so  think,  we  shall  see  in  the  lowest  form 
the  promise  and  potency  of  the  highest,  just  as  we  see  in 
the  savage  himself  the  prophecy  of  reason  and  knowledge, 
culture  and  civilization.  But  if  we  conceive  that  not  reason, 
but  accident  or  ignorance,  was  the  subjective  factor  of  re- 
ligion, then  we  shall  regard  his  beliefs  as  a  series  of  "  mis- 


2o6  AN   ANTHROPOLOGICAL   THEORY 

taken  inferences"  or  as  a  "system  of  superstitions  "  to  be 
outgrown  with  the  growth  of  knowledge,  rather  than  as  a 
soil  rich  with  the  germs  of  higher  things.  The  phrase  we 
have  just  used  is  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's,  but  it  is  not  a  very 
felicitous  phrase.  A  "  superstition  "  is  the  belief  of  a  lower 
stage  of  culture  surviving  into  a  higher,  with  which  it  has 
no  affinity,  and  to  which  it  adheres  as  a  sort  of  fungus. 
Hence  the  belief  in  lucky  days  or  magic  formulae,  in  witches 
or  charms,  becomes  in  an  age  of  science  a  "  superstition  ;  " 
for  it  is  a  survival  from  a  period  when  the  notion  of  natural 
law  was  not  into  a  period  which  conceives  Nature  as  pre- 
eminently the  realm  of  law.  But  the  belief  is  not  a  "  super- 
stition "  when  it  is  part  of  a  consistent  whole,  an  integral 
element  in  the  living  view  of  Man  and  Nature.  The  term, 
therefore,  is  not  applicable  to  the  religions  of  lower  races, 
which  are  entirely  relevant  to  their  stage  of  culture,  and 
to  use  it  of  them  is  significant  only  as  indicating  the  attitude 
of  the  enquirer's  own  mind.  What  it  here  expresses  is  Mr. 
Spencer's  theory  that  the  religion,  or  "system  of  supersti- 
tion which  the  primitive  man  forms,"  is  due  to  "  mistaken 
inferences "  or  to  "  erroneous  interpretations "  of  familiar 
phenomena.  But  in  order  that  he  may  formulate  his  theory 
in  a  manner  that  proves  it,  Mr.  Spencer  has  first  to  make 
his  "  primitive  man  "  ;  and  this  man  is,  of  course,  a  purely 
imaginary  creature,  made  in  the  study  and  after  the  image 
of  his  maker.  And  the  religion  attributed  to  him  is  as 
imaginary  as  himself,  for  it  is  put  together  by  a  method 
that  knows  no  order  and  follows  no  law.  Time  and  place, 
race  and  racial  relations,  historical  antecedents  and  con- 
ditions, degree  of  culture  and  moment  of  development,  are, 
in  the  matter  of  proof  and  method  of  treatment,  utterly 
ignored.  Thus  Mr.  Spencer  will,  in  the  same  chapter,  or 
even  paragraph,  cite  the  Tahitians,  the  American  Indians, 
the  New  Zealanders,  the  Veddahs,  the  ancient  Hindus, 
the  modern  Hindus,  various  African  tribes,  the  Egyptians, 


STATED   AND  CRITICIZED  207 

the  Greeks  and  Romans,  the  Hebrews,  the  Arabians, 
Semites  in  general,  and  "  Europeans  in  the  old  times," 
whoever  they  may  have  been,  whether  Esquimaux,  Finns, 
Basques,  Kelts,  Teutons  or  Slavs,  and  multitudes  more, — to 
illustrate  some  particular  statement  or  doctrine  without  the 
slightest  regard  to  the  cardinal  point  of  their  respective 
environments,  and  the  no  less  cardinal  point  of  the 
history  and  "  experiences  "  of  their  antecedent  organisms. 
He  handles  religions  as  if  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
chronology,  or  place,  or  genetic  development,  or  historical 
evolution.  Criticism,  historical  and  literary,  is  for  him  as 
if  it  were  not.  He  never  distinguishes  old  and  original 
from  recent  and  foreign  elements,  but  deals  with  the 
immensest  systems  as  if  they  had  had  no  history  and 
had  known  no  growth,  at  least  none  save  such  as  could  be 
determined  by  "  the  laws  of  mental  evolution."  1  He  cites  2 
the  Rig  Veda  and  the  Laws  of  Manu  as  alike  veracious 
witnesses  as  to  "  what  the  original  Aryan  beliefs  were," 
which  is  very  much  as  if  one  were  to  quote  the  Epistles  of 
Paul  and  the  Decrees  of  the  Vatican  Council  as  equally 
valid  testimonies  concerning  the  most  primitive  elements  in 
Christi  mity.  With  quite  as  delightful  naivete  the  Hebrews 
are  proved  to  have  had  "rites  like  those  of  ancestor- 
worshippers  in  general,"  mainly  by  an  appeal  to  Deuter- 
onomy, Ecclesiasticus  and  the  Book  of  Tobit.:i  The 
"  Hebrew  ideas  of  another  life"  are  described  in  a  few  crude 
sentences,1  and  ideas  of  Persian  origin  and  peculiar  to  later 
Judaism  are  regarded  as  distinctively  Hebrew.  The  Greek 
and  Roman  religions  are  handled  without  regard  to  their 
origin  or  significance,  and  are  made  to  illustrate  Mr.  Spencer's 
thesis  either  by  an  utter  inversion  or  entire  forgetfulness  of 
their  meaning.  lie  is  aware,  indeed,  that  his  interpretations 
will  be  called  "  Euhemeristic,"  but  he  does  not  see  that 

1  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i.  p.  232.  *  Ibid.  p.  315. 

3  Ibid.  317.  *  Ibid.  208. 


208  ETHNOGRAPHY   AND  HISTORY 

the  objection  to  Euhemerism  is  that  it  is  radically  unhistorical 
and  unscientific,  possible  only  where  a  developed  mythology 
is  studied  through  a  philosophy  ;  quite  impossible  where 
it  has  been  studied  in  its  genesis  and  development.  It  is 
significant,  too,  that  he  is  as  confident  about  his  doctrines 
and  theories  when  he  cannot  as  when  he  can  find  evidence 
for  them  in  the  ancient  religions.  He  finds  in  none  but  the 
Egyptian  evidence  of  belief  in  a  Resurrection,  but  he  never 
seems  to  miss  it.  His  case  in  no  way  rests  on  history  or 
criticism  ;  it  is  an  evolution  from  consciousness,  a  theory 
transcendently  deduced,  ethnographically  illustrated,  but  in 
no  case  historically  proved.  Allow  a  man  to  adapt  the 
laws  of  logic  and  the  method  of  proof  to  his  own  con- 
venience, and  give  him  the  whole  of  time  to  range  over 
for  illustrations  of  his  peculiar  theory,  and  he  will  prove 
it  ;  only  the  theory,  when  proved,  will  have  but  small 
scientific  significance,  since  without  any  real  relation  to 
the  growth  of  mind  and  the  order  of  human  development. 

|   IV.     Rthnographic  and  Historical  Religion 

I.  Now  this  criticism  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has,  it  is  hoped, 
made  several  things  evident.  First,  the  difference  between 
the  ethnographic  and  the  historical  treatment  of  religion. 
Ethnography  studies  and  sketches  features,  characteristics, 
customs,  scattered,  insulated,  or  separable  phenomena  ;  but 
history  studies  the  organism  as  it  lives  and  grows  in  its  own 
home,  affected  by  all  the  forces  that  surround  and  play 
upon  it.  In  ethnography  the  writer  selects  the  incidents,  the 
customs,  the  beliefs,  the  qualities  that  interest  him,  groups 
and  grades  them  in  his  own  way,  throws  the  emphasis  where 
he  thinks  it  ought  to  lie  ;  in  a  word,  states  the  problem  in  his 
own  terms,  and  finds  the  factors  that  he  imagines  will  solve 
it  ;  but  history  allows  him  no  such  freedom,  defines  for  him 
the  time  and  the  space  within  which  he  must  move,  the 
growth  he  has  to  measure,  the  variations  he  has  to  explain. 


THE  METHODS  OF  MEN  AND  NATURE   209 

The  only  development  ethnography  can  be  made  to  exhibit 
is  the  one  which  the  writer  designs  ;  it  is  like  a  picture 
painted  on  a  flat  surface  by  an  artist  who  creates  his  own 
perspective,  and  by  a  skilful  use  of  light  and  shade  compels 
us  to  see  just  what  his  imagination  has  seen  and  as  he  saw  it. 
But  history  presents  us  with  a  development  which  nature 
and  man  have  combined  to  conduct,  invites  us  to  watch  it 
proceeding,  and  to  discover  the  factors  by  which  it  has  been 
or  is  being  accomplished.  The  ethnographic  method  is  thus 
subjective,  and  either,  if  the  man  who  uses  it  be  an  artist, 
simply  descriptive,  or,  if  he  be  a  thinker,  an  illustrated 
dogmatic,  i.e.  a  system  speculatively  deduced,  though  ex- 
pounded in  terms  drawn  from  savage  customs,  real  or 
imaginary.  But  the  historical  method  is  objective,  and  is 
possible  only  to  a  man  who  has  an  eye  to  see  and  to  read,  as 
if  it  were  a  living  thing,  the  complex  unity  of  thought  and 
custom  which  man  made  for  a  religion  to  himself,  and  in 
making  which  he  made  himself  man,  and  became  a  society,  a 
state,  and  a  people.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  if  Mr. 
Spencer  had  studied  at  first  hand  a  single  historical  religion, 
we  should  never  have  had  the  theory  which  forms  the  basis 
of  his  sociology.  And  what  is  true  of  him  may  be  said 
of  many  another  ethnographer  who  has  tried  to  turn  his 
descriptive  science  into  a  philosophy. 

2.  But  a  second  thing  our  criticism  has  made  evident  is  the 
distinction  and  independence  of  the  questions  concerned 
respectively  with  the  primitive  form  and  the  source  or  origin 
of  religion.  The  question  as  to  the  form  is  historical,  but 
there  is  no  history  that  can  resolve  it.  But  the  question  as 
to  the  source  is  philosophical,  and  so  admits  of  discussion. 
Yet  there  is  a  connexion  between  the  two  which  may  be  thus 
indicated: — If  we  cannot  trace  religion  to  the  hallucinations 
or  dreams,  with  their  suggestion  of  mysterious  "doubles/'  of 
a  gorged  or  a  hungry  savage,  it  will  be  impossible  for  us  to 
describe  its  oldest  or  most  rudimentary  forms  in  such  terms 

P.C.R.  14 


210  RELIGION   ROOTED   IN   REASON 

as  "superstitions"  or  "mistaken  inferences."  What  this 
means  will  become  apparent  in  the  next  discussion,  which 
has  to  determine  two  points :  (a)  the  relation  between  the 
subjective  factor  and  the  objective  fact  of  religion,  and  (/3) 
between  the  assumed  primitive  or  ethnographic  religion,  and 
the  religions  of  history. 

(a)  The  subjective  factor  is  Mind,  or,  more  concretely,  Man, 
conceived  as  nascent  reason,  and  so  constituted  that  he 
cannot  become  rational  without  realizing  religion.  The 
first  effort  of  the  reason  is  to  distinguish  itself  from  Nature, 
i.e.  to  become  a  conscious  person  ;  and  the  second  is  to 
transcend  the  Nature  which  it  knows  is  different  from  itself, 
i.e.  to  create  an  order  which  is  not  an  order  of  Nature,  but  of 
Reason.  Now  both  processes  are  accomplished  in  the  same 
way — by  the  evolution  and  articulation  of  ideas  which  are 
native  to  the  reason,  because  the  ideas  by  virtue  of  which  it 
is  rational.  These  ideas  are  not  external  things  implanted 
in  the  mind  by  various  cunning  contrivances,  but  they  are 
educed  from  within,  the  products  of  thought  acting  according 
to  its  own  nature  or  laws.  The  most  hopeless  of  all  problems 
ever  set  to  human  ingenuity  is  this  :  Grant  an  organized 
being  without  reason,  by  what  process  of  Nature  can  we  get 
reason  inserted  within  him  ?  Man  does  not  get  reason  from 
without ;  he  is  reason,  and  as  reason  awakens  it  speaks,  and 
its  speech  embodies  the  ideas  which  reveal  its  nature,  and 
which  are  at  the  same  time  the  mirror  in  which  it  beholds 
itself.  Thus  it  follows  that  the  ideas  which  reason  expresses 
must  correspond  in  character  and  quality  to  what  it  is  in 
itself,  rather  than  to  what  can  only  be  defined  as  the  nega- 
tion of  itself.  What  these  ideas  are  we  may  best  express 
by  saying  that  they  are  those  of  a  being  who  cannot  think 
without  thinking  God,  or  act  without  incorporating  his 
thoughts  in  appropriate  customs  and  institutions,  i.e.  as  his 
thoughts  are  beliefs  concerning  Deity,  his  usages  are  forms 
which  speak  of  his  relations  to  the  Deity  and  of  the  Deity's 


BUT  CONDITIONED   BY   NATURE  211 

to  him.  This  means  that  man  can  as  little  choose  to  be 
religious  as  to' be  rational ;  he  is  both,  and  both  by  the  same 
necessity  of  Nature.  For  expression  is  a  necessity  to  reason  ; 
if  it  is  to  live,  it  must  by  speaking  create  speech.  And, 
similarly,  expression  is  a  necessity  to  religion  ;  if  it  is  to  live, 
it  must  take  to  itself  shape — make  for  itself  a  body  ;  and 
this  body  will  have  a  double  correspondence,  on  the  one  side 
to  the  reason,  on  the  other  to  the  place  which  is  its  home. 

And  it  is  here  where  we  may  perceive  the  relation  between 
the  subjective  factor  and  the  objective  fact.  For  religion, 
though  its  source  be  ideal,  is  yet  not  pure  but  embodied 
spirit,  an  expression  of  the  reason  conditioned  by  the 
environment  in  which  it  lives.  Man  can  as  little  think  as 
he  can  live  in  a  vacuum,  and  the  place  he  occupies  will 
supply  both  form  and  colour  to  the  thoughts  he  articulates. 
In  other  words,  religion  at  its  birth  is  an  epitome  alike  of 
the  spirit  which  bears  it  and  the  natural  conditions  within 
which  that  spirit  lives.  In  it  are  mingled  all  the  elements 
which  compose  the  man  and  constitute  his  world.  He  can 
think  of  the  gods  only  under  terms  intelligible  to  his 
intellect  ;  still,  however  rude  the  form  under  which  he  thinks 
them,  it  is  of  gods  he  thinks.  He  may  conceive  the  divine 
as  the  magic  which  dwells  in  some  stick  or  stone,  in  some 
old  garment  or  strange  plant  ;  or  as  the  mysterious  power 
which  resides  in  some  animal — a  bull  or. bear,  a  dog  or  cat  ; 
or  in  some  person — poet,  medicine  man,  or  chief;  but  how- 
ever he  may  conceive  it,  what  he  conceives  is  to  him  as  real 
a  deity,  and  as  truly  supernatural,  as  Jehovah  was  to  the 
Hebrews.  The  living  heart  of  his  belief  is  the  theistic  idea 
the  form  in  which  he  expresses  it  is  the  accident  of  time 
and  place,  marking  the  stage  and  quality  of  his  culture,  and 
connoting  the  conditions — climatic,  geographical,  ethnical, 
and  political — under  which  he  has  lived.  The  form  is,  as 
it  were,  the  double  of  the  world  he  lives  in — therefore  the 
creation  of  experience  ;  but  the  matter  is  the  double  of  the 


212  MIND   MAKES  THE   MATTER 

spirit  he  is — therefore  the  product  of  his  own  transcendency. 
His  religion  is  made  up,  then,  of  two  constituents  (i.)  the 
substantive  or  ideal,  i.e.  the  conception  of  the  transcendental, 
the  supernatural,  or  the  divine,  which  is  a  product  of  thought 
working  on  the  phenomena  it  perceives  ;  and  (ii.)  the  formal 
or  real,  i.e.  the  terms  or  vehicles  which  embody  his  ideas,  the 
stories,  rites,  and  customs  that  come  out  of  his  own  experi- 
ence, both  outer  and  inner.  The  ethnographic  student  of 
religion  tends  to  emphasize  the  latter,  and  to  select  now  one, 
and  now  another,  of  its  features  as  the  chief  or  essential 
element  in  religion.  The  emphasis  has  fallen  now  on  the 
philological  or  literary  expression  ;  and  the  mythology,  the 
folklore,  the  divine  names  and  attributes  have  been  investi- 
gated and  compared.  Then  the  emphasis  has  changed  to 
institution  or  custom  ;  and  the  totem,  the  sacrifice,  the  priest, 
the  magician  have  become  the  fields  of  research  and  specu- 
lation. But  these  by  themselves  are  more  significant  of 
the  stage  of  culture  than  of  the  nature  or  character  of  the 
religion.  For  if  man  tells  certain  stories  of  his  gods,  it  is 
only  such  stories  as  he  could  believe  were  they  told  of  the 
more  heroic  men  ;  and  if  he  believes  that  the  sacrifice  is 
a  meal  which  satisfies  the  gods,  it  is  because  he  knows 
that  even  such  a  meal  would  please  men,  and  express  or 
seal  amicable  relations  between  them.  But  the  life  and 
permanence  of  the  religion  do  not  lie  in  the  elegance  of  the 
mythology  or  the  persistence  of  the  institution  or  custom  ; 
they  lie  rather  in  the  continued  and  refining  activity  of  the 
thought.  It  would  be  hard  to  exaggerate  the  rudeness  of 
the  form  which  religion  assumes  in  the  lower  stages  of 
culture  ;  but  this  ought  not  to  conceal  from  us  the  fact 
that  the  process  which  produced  it  was  in  its  own  order, 
if  not  as  fine  yet  as  rational  and  real,  as  that  to  which  we 
owe  the  art,  the  poetry,  and  the  philosophy  of  to-day. 
Man  produced  it  because  he  was  struggling  to  express  or 
realize  himself,  within  a  system  that  forced  him  to  be  rational 


NATURE   THE   FORM   OF   RELIGION         213 

in  order  that  he  might  be  man  while  the  system  remained 
Nature.  And"  the  real  continuity  of  religion  lies  in  the 
continued  activity  of  the  creative  process,  the  thought  which 
is  ever  refining  the  forms  it  has  inherited,  and  seeking  fitter 
vehicles  for  its  richer  and  sublimer  ideas. 

(/3)  The  second  question,  as  to  the  relation  between 
ethnographic  religion  and  the  historical  religions,  is  as  im- 
portant from  a  scientific  as  the  first  question  was  from  a 
philosophical  point  of  view.  The  generalities  of  anthropology 
may  show  how  features  persisted  or  customs  survived  ;  but 
they  do  not  help  us  to  see  how  the  organisms  called  historical 
religions  were  built  up,  and  quickened,  and  developed.  To 
find  a  multitude  of  "survivals"  is  a  thing  as  easy  as  it  is 
insignificant  ;  but  what  is  much  more  difficult  to  explain,  and 
much  worthier  of  explanation,  is  how  so  many  religious 
beliefs  and  customs  have  died  while  religion  has  survived, 
their  death  tending  rather  to  its  rejuvenescence  than  its 
decay.  And  what  does  this  mean  but  the  want  of  objective 
validity  in  what  we  have  termed  ethnographic  religion  as 
opposed  to  the  religions  of  history?  What  is  presented  to 
us  as  the  religion  of  primitive  peoples  is  a  mere  abstract  system 
stated  and  developed  in  the  terms  of  generalized  customs 
rather  than  of  logical  formulae.  The  term  totem,  used  by  the 
North  American  Indians  to  denote  one  of  their  own  customs, 
has  been  applied  to  Australasian  tribes  whose  customs  are 
too  varied  to  be  stated  in  identical  terms,  being  indeed  often, 
as  the  latest  researches  show,  exactly  the  converge  of  the 
Indian  ;  and  the  convevance  of  the  phrase  has  been  naturallv 
followed  by  the  attribution  of  the  thing  and  the  whole  order 
of  thought  it  represented.  But  a  particular  fact  stated  as  a 
general  proposition  is  an  argumentative  proceeding  whose 
worth  can  be  easily  appraised.  As  a  con>c<[iience  tin's 
product  of  the  ethnographic  method  can  be  brought  into 
organic  relation  with  no  single  historical  religion.  Mr. 
Andrew  Lang  has  plaintively  bewailed  that  the  strata  in 


214      SAVAGE   RELIGION   LESS   SIGNIFICANT 

the  field  he  has  so  thoroughly  studied  and  so  interestingly 
described,  are  not  superimposed  or  even  adjacent,  but  widely 
scattered.  And  the  difficulty  is  to  find  the  succession  of  the 
scattered  strata ;  their  sequence  is  a  thing  of  imagination 
or  conjecture,  not  of  history.  The  fragments  have  to  be 
collected,  like  the  limbs  of  Osiris,  from  the  most  distant 
places,  only  Osiris  has  to  be  made  out  of  the  limbs,  with  no 
certainty  that  he  ever  was,  or,  if  he  ever  were,  that  the  limbs 
were  really  his.  The  image  made  of  members  collected  from 
India,  Australasia,  America,  China,  Africa,  and  Europe,  can 
hardly  be  expected  to  make  a  very  homogeneous  figure, 
though,  indeed,  it  may  well  be  a  figure  capable  of  being  the 
parent  of  anything.  But  the  impossibility  of  affiliating  the 
forms  or  of  finding  any  valid  sequences  in  their  order,  makes 
the  attempt  to  find  the  origin  and  roots  of  religion,  or  to 
define  and  determine  its  function  in  history  and  in  the 
evolution  of  society  through  the  study  of  its  meanest  and 
most  barbarous  forms,  seem  an  altogether  fallacious  pro- 
cedure For  religion  is  neither  a  peculiarity  of  the  savage 
state,  nor  is  it  there  that  its  social  action  can  best  be 
studied.  Man  does  not  leave  it  behind  him  as  he  leaves 
his  stone  implements,  his  cave  dwellings,  his  nakedness,  his 
polyandry,  and  the  other  accidents  of  his  savagery.  It  is 
the  one  thing  that  can  be  described  as  his  invariable  attribute ; 
and,  like  all  things  which  do  not  die,  its  higher  or  more 
perfect  forms  are  more  significant  of  its  real  nature,  and 
therefore  of  its  actual  source  and  cause,  than  any  multitude 
of  low  forms  or  rudimentary  types.  This  does  not  mean 
that  the  comparative  study  of  the  primitive  religions  is 
vvorthless  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  a  discipline  that  no  student 
of  human  nature  and  history  can  afford  to  despise.  The 
more  we  know  of  savage  man  the  better  we  shall  know 
man  civilized  ;  but  then  civilized  has  even  more  significance 
for  savage  man  than  savage  for  civilized,  especially  if  our 
purpose  is  to  discover  his  possibilities  and  intrinsic  worth. 


-   THAN  THE   RELIGION   OF   THE   CIVILIZED   215 

The  meaning  of  childhood  becomes  apparent  to  us  only  in 
and  through  manhood  ;  and  though  the  psychology  of  the 
child  may  be  a  matter  of  inexhaustible  interest  to  the  man, 
and  most  instructive  to  him  if  he  be  a  parent  or  a  teacher,  yet  it 
is  only  in  the  man  that  the  mind  of  the  child  stands  revealed. 
So  if  religion  be  studied  through  savage  custom  and  myth, 
some  religions  may  be  better  understood,  and  some  elements 
in  all  religions  may  be  made  more  intelligible ;  but  religion 
as  the  most  potent,  universal,  and  permanent  of  all  human 
things  will  not  be  any  nearer  scientific  explanation.  For  it 
can  be  explained  only  as  it  is  traced  to  causes  which  are  as 
common  and  as  constant  as  itself,  which  operate  even  more 
powerfully  in  the  civilized  than  in  the  savage  state,  and  do  so 
because  the  civilized  man  is  a  truer  type  of  humanity,  because 
he  is  more  of  a  man,  than  the  savage. 

§  V.      The  Causes  of  Variation  in  Religion 

Religion,  then,  is  best  studied  as  an  organism  living  within 
its  own  special  habitat,  experiencing  change  even  while  it 
performs  work,  and  developing  new  organs  and  functions 
because  it  is  daily  challenged  to  exercise  new  energies.  But 
this  brings  us  to  a  question  concerning  which  something 
must  be  said,  viz.,  if  religion  have  a  common  and  single 
root,  why  have  we  such  a  multitude  of  religions  ?  Are  there 
any  natural  causes  working  for  variation  ?  The  fundamental 
principle  here  is  :  What  is  most  generic  in  religion  has  at 
once  its  root  and  organ  in  what  is  most  generic  in  man.  He 
is  religious  not  by  chance  but  by  Nature,  not  by  choice  but 
by  necessity.  He  did  not  stumble  into  religion,  but  grew 
into  it,  and  it  grew  in  and  with  him.  The  true  survival  in 
religion  is  not  the  superstition  or  the  custom  which  persists 
from  a  lower  into  a  higher  state,  but  the  idea  which  under- 
goes transfiguration  but  not  conversion.  The  persistence  of 
the  idea  means  the  continuous  activity  of  the  creative  factor, 
but  the  infinite  variety  of  the  forms  it  assumes  are  due 


216  CONFLICT   OF   THE   IDEAL  AND   FORMAL 

to  causes  more  or  less  local  and  occasional.  There  is  a  con- 
stant conflict  between  the  ideal  and  the  formal  elements  in 
religion.  The  spirit  which  created  is  never  satisfied  with 
its  own  creations,  is  ever  returning  on  them,  questioning, 
doubting,  re-formulating  them  ;  and  it  is  by  being  continually 
handled  that  they  continuously  live,  outgrow  their  ancient 
forms,  and  effect  changes  even  in  the  things  they  themselves 
had  made.  But  the  forms — creeds,  customs,  laws,  ceremonies, 
priesthoods — represent  the  formal  elements  ;  and  their  in- 
variable tendency  is  to  impose  themselves  and  their  limitations 
on  the  ideal.  Man  is  conservative  by  virtue  of  what  in  him 
is  local  and  particular — -what  is  his  own  in  distinction  not 
only  from  what  is  another  person's,  but  what  is  man's  ;  but 
he  is  progressive  by  virtue  of  what  in  him  is  universal  and 
generic — what  in  him  is  his  own  because  he  is  man.  Hence, 
while  the  ethnographic  student  thinks  that  the  custom  and 
the  institution,  as  the  best  conserved  and  least  changeable 
element  in  religion,  is  the  most  characteristic  and  important; 
the  philosophical  student,  aware  that  the  institution  endures 
only  by  virtue  of  the  ideas  read  into  it,  seeks  the  secret  of 
the  religion  in  these  ideas  and  their  source.  Without  these 
the  institution  would  die  and  the  custom  cease ;  it  is  the 
universal  that  keeps  the  local  alive,  while  the  local  is  ever 
threatening  the  universal  with  death.  It  is,  therefore,  in  the 
local  and  occasional  causes  which  create  the  outward  forms 
that  the  factors  of  variation  must  be  sought. 

These  are  too  many  to  be  here  analyzed  and  described,  but 
they  may  be  reduced  to  certain  great  categories,  such  as  race, 
place,  ethnical  relations,  history,  social  and  economical  needs, 
and  special  or  creative  personalities.  Each  of  these  affects 
religion  on  many  sides  and  in  many  ways.  We  note  only 
the  most  salient. 

i.  Race.  It  is  easy  to  exaggerate  both  the  fact  and  the 
function  of  racial  characteristics,  yet  it  is  hardly  open  to 
doubt  that  such  characteristics  really  exist.  There  is  a  psy- 


RACE   AS   FACTOR   OF   CHANGE  217 

chology  of  peoples  as  well  as  of  persons,  and  communities 
exhibit  on  a  large  scale  the  distinctive  qualities  that  particular 
pjrsons  show  on  a  scale  infinitely  minute.  The  fact  that  the 
literature  of  one  people  can  be  translated  into  that  of  another, 
implies  their  likeness  ;  the  fact  that  no  translation  can  be 
the  exact  equivalent  of  the  original,  implies  their  difference. 
When  M.  Renan,  in  his  early  work  on  the  Semitic  Languages, 
expatiated  on  what  he  termed  the  monotheistic  instinct  of 
the  Semitic  peoples,  he  gave  poetical  expression  to  what  he 
conceived  to  be  a  racial  characteristic.  This  instinct  might 
have  no  more  to  justify  it  in  fact  than  that  the  parent 
monotheism  of  the  world  issued  from  a  Semitic  people  ;  but 
the  theory  forgot  that  no  Semitic  people  has  been  able  by 
its  own  act  to  make  monotheism  a  reality.  The  Arabian, 
without  the  help  of  the  Persian  on  the  intellectual  side  and 
the  Tartar  on  the  political  and  military,  would  never  have 
made  Islam  the  great  missionary  religion  it  became,  and  has 
remained.  The  Jew  would  have  cancelled  his  monotheistic 
ideal  by  his  tribal  enthusiasm,  which  allowed  the  Gentile  to 
become  a  worshipper  of  Jehovah  only  on  the  condition  that 
he  became  a  Jew.  Yet  the  passion  that  breathed  the  breath 
of  life  into  the  idea  of  the  one  God,  and  made  it  live  to  other 
races,  was  distinctly  Semitic.  The  passion  may  have  implied 
a  deficiency  of  imagination  and  a  simplicity  of  thought,  both  of 
which  may  have  been  due  to  early  associations  with  a  nature 
more  severe  and  monotonous  than  fruitful  and  varied  ;  but 
whatever  the  reason,  monotheism  was  in  its  origin  a  Semitic 
faith.  The  Aryan,  on  the  other  hand,  has  never  been  spon- 
taneously monotheistic,  though  often  monistic.  The  unities 
he  has  striven  after  have  been  unities  of  thought,  abstractions 
rather  than  concrete  personalities.  He  has  loved  to  make 
his  gods  either  speak  in  forms  more  or  less  appropriate  to 
the  senses,  or  exist  in  formuhe  more  or  less  intelligible  to  Un- 
reason :  according  to  the  one  impulse  he  has  been  a  polytln-ist, 
according  to  the  other  he  has  been  a  pantheist  ;  and  the  bar- 


218  PLACE  AS  FORMAL  FACTOR  OF  IDEAS 

mony  of  the  tendencies  has  been  seen  in  this,  that  where  he 
has  been  most  pantheistic  his  polytheism  has  been  the  most 
multitudinous.  These  tendencies  may  express  influences 
flowing  out  of  ancient  years  when  the  susceptible  mind 
was  impressed  and  worked  upon  by  a  nature  that  seemed 
alive,  that  blossomed  into  beauty,  that  burst  into  fruitfulness,. 
and  ever  revealed  to  sense  an  inner  energy  of  being  that 
delighted  to  break  out  in  life  and  growth.  But  whatever  may 
be  the  cause  of  its  special  characteristics,  race  has  its  value 
in  things  both  of  the  mind  and  the  imagination  ;  and  so  we 
but  formulate  an  obvious  conclusion  when  we  say  that  blood 
counts  in  religion  as  a  factor  determining  its  special  type. 

2.  Place  acts  variously  upon  a  people,  but  there  are 
two  distinct  influences  it  may  exercise  ; — either,  directly,  a 
physical,  or,  indirectly,  an  ethnical,  due  to  its  power  from 
its  position  or  its  configuration  to  hinder  or  to  promote 
human  intercourse.  Thus  the  child  of  the  mountains  or  the 
son  of  the  desert  has  each  had  his  beliefs  directly  affected 
and  modified  by  his  place.  The  nature  which  environs 
the  two  is  so  different  that  the  ideas  it  begets  in  them 
as  to  the  creative  and  conservative  powers  appear  in  very 
different  forms  and  with  dissimilar  qualities.  If  the  sun 
dispels  the  cloud  around  the  mountain,  thaws  the  ice  in 
the  valleys,  and  sends  down  the  fertilizing  streams  into  the 
plains,  it  will  have  one  meaning  for  man  ;  and  if  it  beats 
hotly  upon  him  by  day,  endangering  by  its  beams  his  life, 
heating  the  sand  under  his  foot,  and  drying  the  water 
in  the  springs,  it  will  have  quite  another  meaning  for  him. 
And  as  he  will  read  through  the  great  forces  of  Nature  that 
which  is  behind  it,  the  sun  will  in  the  one  case  become  to 
him  the  name  or  symbol  of  a  beneficent  deity ;  in  the  other 
case  of  a  demonic  or  of  an  actually  or  potentially  maleficent 
power.  And  so  the  attitude  of  man's  mind  to  the  theistic 
idea,  and  the  terms  or  forms  he  uses  to  express  it,  will  be 
largely  conditioned  by  his  physical  environment.  Hence 


TRANSCENDENCE   AND   IMMANENCE         219 

races  cradled  amid  a  fruitful  Nature, — where  its  vital  force 
is  the  most  manifest  thing,  compelling  men  to  feel  as  if 
suckled  at  breasts  of  inexhaustible  fulness — come  to  think 
of  the  creative  life  as  something  spontaneous  and  inner,  an 
energy  which  struggles  from  within  outwards.  But  races 
whose  cradle  has  been  the  desert  or  the  arid  plain — where 
the  forces  without  wither  the  feeble  life  that  tries  to  issue 
from  within,  and  where  a  man  has  to  be  strong  if  Nature 
is  to  be  subdued — tend  to  think  of  the  creative  energy  as 
outward,  something  which  imposes  its  will  on  the  reluctant 
wilderness.  In  the  former  case  the  tendency  is  to  conceive 
Deity  as  an  immanent  energy,  and  life  is  deified  as  with  the 
Egyptians,  or  the  soul  which  dwells  in  all  men  and  rolls 
through  all  things  is  made  the  sovereign  god,  as  with  the 
Brahma  of  the  Hindus.  In  the  latter  case  the  tendency  is 
to  conceive  Deity  as  outside  and  above  Nature,  a  force  which 
acts  upon  it  rather  than  lives  within  it  ;  and  so  gods  are 
named  masters,  makers,  lords,  and  described  in  the  terms 
so  familiar  to  the  student  of  the  Semitic  religions.  When 
the  elements  latent  in  each  of  these  attitudes  of  mind  are 
developed  and  unified,  the  conception  becomes  in  the  one 
case  that  of  Divine  immanence,  in  the  other  that  of  Divine 
transcendence.  When  the  idea  which  had  spontaneously 
arisen  comes  to  be  speculatively  construed,  the  immanence 
will  blossom  into  a  Pantheism,  the  transcendence  into  a 
Monotheism.  And  as  an  indication  of  the  long  persistence 
of  qualities  which  physical  influences  had  tended  to  create, 
it  deserves  to  be  noted  that  while  Pantheism  is  native  to 
both  Hindu  and  Greek  thought,  it  has  never  appeared  as 
a  native  product  among  any  Semitic  people,  the  cases  which 
do  occur  having  been  due  to  the  action  of  alien  thought 
on  special  persons.  And  we  may  add,  it  is  not  without 
significance  that  the  race  which  first  learned  the  meaning  of 
the  Pole-star  to  the  mariner,  was  one  which  came  of  a  desert 
parentage.  It  applied  to  the  trackless  ocean  the  instincts 


220      INFLUENCE   OF   ETHNICAL   RELATIONS 

that  had  been  transmitted  to  it  through  fathers  who  had 
learned  to  seek  in  the  heavens  above  guides  for  their  way 
through  the  trackless  sand  below. 

3.  Ethnical  relations,  largely  also  affected  by  place,  exer- 
cise varied  influences.  Their  kind  and  degree  and  effect 
will  depend  on  such  things  as  whether  the  peoples  meet 
as  friends  or  foes,  as  cognates  or  aliens,  as  buyers  and 
sellers,  or  as  explorers  and  explored  ;  whether  they  touch 
as  it  were  only  from  a  distance  or  mix  and  intermingle ; 
whether  their  culture  is  alike  or  different  in  character 
and  in  stage  ;  whether  the  one  is  of  an  established  order 
with  fixed  laws  and  recognized  usages,  while  the  other  is, 
in  all  similar  respects,  fluid  and  unformed  ;  whether  the  one 
is  conqueror  and  the  other  conquered,  or  both  are  equals. 
Thus  the  lower  races  are  powerfully  affected  by  the  presence 
of  the  higher.  It  is  doubtful  whether  the  man  who  visits  a 
new  people  that  he  may  study  their  customs,  does  not  cause 
or  occasion  some  of  the  most  characteristic  customs  he  de- 
scribes. The  very  attempt  to  render  to  a  stranger  an  account 
of  the  thing  he  does,  changes  the  attitude  of  the  simple  mind 
to  the  thing  or  to  the  mode  of  doing  it.  Wherever  the  foot 
of  the  white  man  touches,  it  works  changes  in  the  thoughts, 
blood,  ways,  and  worship  of  the  people.  He  may  not  mean 
to  effect  any  change,  but  he  effects  one  all  the  same  ;  and 
his  ubiquity  has  now  made  the  discovery  of  a  pure  native 
religion  a  thing  no  longer  possible.  Then  it  has  been  often 
remarked,  though  not  always  with  truth,  that  the  gods  of 
one  race  or  tribe  become  the  devils  of  another  ;  and  it  is 
even  more  curious  that  the  two  things  which  people  can 
most  easily  interchange  are  their  vices  and  their  gods.  This 
is  no  new  thing,  but  as  old  as  man.  It  did  not  need  to 
wait  for  illustration  upon  the  action  of  our  merchants  and 
missionaries  to-day ;  Egypt  and  Phoenicia,  Babylonia  and 
Assyria  knew  it,  and  ancient  literature  is  full  of  it.  The 
intercourse  of  peoples  then  as  now  worked  for  good  and 


NEW   PEOPLES   IN   THE   HANDS   CF   OLD     221 

evil,  hastened  civilization  even  where  it  changed  religion. 
The  races  thstt  were  planted  on  the  northern  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean  came  early  into  contact  with  the  older  races 
on  its  eastern  and  southern  shores,  and  learned  from  them 
arts  and  crafts,  customs  and  beliefs  that  quickened  their 
development,  exercised  their  energies,  and  fitted  them  to 
play  their  great  part  in  the  history  of  the  world  at  a  much 
earlier  period  than  their  brothers  who  had  remained  in 
central  and  northern  Europe.  This  ethnical  intercourse 
made  them,  too,  different  in  character  and  in  destiny  from 
the  brothers  who  had  wandered  into  India,  and  had  become 
there  such  potent  factors  of  religion  and  change.  Man's 
influence  on  man,  therefore,  is  as  powerful  as  ever  was  the 
influence  of  Nature  to  modify  worship  and  belief. 

4.  But  history  tends  to  modify  religion  even  more  than 
nature  or  ethnical  relations.  The  longer  man  lives  the 
stronger  grows  the  power  of  the  past  over  the  present. 
For  not  only  does  memory  become  more  crowded  with 
images,  but  the  images  grow  more  defined  and  definite. 
Imagination  comes  to  its  aid,  and  the  hero  experiences 
apotheosis ;  deity  is  made  in  the  image  of  man,  and  an- 
thropomorphism enlarges  the  qualities  and  attributes  of  the 
divine.  But  the  stage  of  culture  at  which  the  process  of 
apotheosis  begins,  as  well  as  the  underlying  idea  of  Deity 
in  its  relation  to  Nature  and  man,  must  also  be  taken  into 
account  as  helping  to  determine  the  specific  character  of  the 
religious  ideal.  Thus  the  notion  of  the  Divine  immanence 
was  native  to  both  the  Hindu  and  Greek  mind,  but  their 
respective  pasts  made  a  notable  difference  in  the  form  it 
assumed.  In  India  it  was  an  immanence  that  was  primarily 
one  of  nature  and  class,  but  in  Greece  an  immanence  in 
the  man  as  a  man.  It  was  the  Brahman  who  was  to 
the  Hindu  the  pre-eminent  incarnation  of  his  God,  but  in 
Greece  it  was  the  hero — the  most  manlike  of  men.  Then, 
too,  the  stage  of  culture  made  itself  apparent  in  the  con- 


222         EARTH   THE   SHADOW   OF   HEAVEN 

struction  of  the  Divine  order.  The  Vedic  mythology  has 
been  termed  simultaneous,  the  Homeric  successive,  i.e.  the 
Vedic  deities  stand  together,  independent,  distinct,  co- 
ordinate, but  as  it  were  uncombined  and  unsystematized  ; 
while  the  Homeric  deities  are  reduced  to  system,  and  a 
principle  of  subordination  has  been  introduced  which  reflects 
Greek  society  and  the  State.  In  the  Homeric  mythology 
there  is  a  fine  harmony  between  the  worlds  of  gods  and  of 
men ;  neither  is  a  reproach  to  the  other,  but  each  is  wrought 
in  the  other's  image.  They  do  not  differ  in  morals,  lust, 
cruelty,  love  of  friends,  and  hatred  of  enemies  ;  the  duties  of 
hospitality  and  friendship  reign  in  heaven  as  on  earth.  Zeus 
and  Hera  have  their  jealousies,  quarrels,  and  inconsistencies 
even  as  Agamemnon  and  Clytemnestra,  though  Olympus 
does  not  know  a  love  so  pure  and  invincible  as  Penelope's. 
In  the  councils  of  the  gods  the  same  infirmities  of  temper, 
the  same  swift  and  satirical  speech,  appear  as  in  the  assembly 
of  the  Greek  chiefs.  The  gods,  like  so  many  hungry  warriors, 
love  the  smell  of  fat  beeves,  and  go  where  they  can  most 
enjoy  it.  They  are  as  envious  as  even  men  themselves  can 
be  of  the  happy  or  the  prosperous  man.  In  the  upper  world, 
as  upon  the  earth,  the  under  world  is  feared  ;  and  fate  and 
death  cast  as  thick  a  shadow  upon  Olympus  as  they  do  upon 
the  homes  of  men.  This  complete  anthropomorphization  of 
the  Greek  god  is  the  counterpart  of  the  complete  immanence 
of  the  idea  of  the  divine  in  man  ;  while  in  the  Hindu 
mythology  the  pre-eminent  incarnation  of  deity  in  a  class  or 
the  instruments  of  a  class,  results  in  a  notion  of  the  divine 
so  little  man-like  as  to  be  now  brutal,  now  physical,  but 
never  as  human  and  ethical  as  we  know  the  Greek  gods 
tended  to  become. 

5.  But  this  action  of  history  further  shows  itself  in  the  in- 
fluence exercised  by  the  social  or  political  ideal  on  the  notion 
of  the  divine.  We  have  very  different  conceptions  of  Deity 
and  his  relations  to  man  in  societies  that  are  organized  on  the 


THE   SOCIETY   OF  GODS  MANLIKE  223 

patriarchal  or  regal,  and  in  those  governed  by  the  s.ocial  or 
communal  idea.  Thus  amid  the  Semitic  tribes  we  have  very 
early  the  patriarchate.  The  family  is  the  natural  unit  of 
society  and  has  at  its  head  the  father,  who  is  the  natural 
monarch.  And  we  have  in  consequence  two  parallel  pheno- 
mena :  the  most  absolute  sovereignty  is  ascribed  to  God  and 
also  to  the  king.  This  is  connected  with  the  notion  of  the 
Divine  transcendence,  which  means  that  God  is  a  Will  above 
Nature,  and  not  within  it;  just  as  the  king  is  at  once  in  being 
and  will  above  the  state,  creative  of  it  rather  than  incor- 
porated within  it.  On  the  other  hand,  amid  the  Aryan 
tribes  of  India  the  regal  as  well  as  the  priestly  class  are 
conceived  as  evolved  from  the  people  ;  they  proceed  from 
below  upwards,  or  grow  from  within  outwards  rather  than 
constitute  the  state  by  a  transcendent  and  external  will. 
The  immanent  notion  and  tendency  which  in  thought 
created  Pantheism  built  up  a  society  which,  in  its  very 
classes,  grades,  and  functions,  represented  an  inherent  order. 
The  social  •  ideal  of  the  tribal  polity  thus  becomes  the 
vehicle  and  symbol  of  the  tribal  theology.  As  a  con- 
sequence the  social  and  the  religious  worlds  helped  to 
organize  each  other;  the  same  idea  was  the  architect  of 
both  religion  and  the  state. 

6.  But  now  as  a  special  form  of  the  historical  influence 
qualifying  the  political  and  social,  the  action  of  great  per- 
sonalities must  be  recognised.  There  is  no  region  in  which 
they  arc  at  once  so  powerless  and  so  powerful — so  powerless 
to  annihilate  or  create,  so  powerful  to  modify  or  change. 
It  docs  not  lie  with  any  human  will  to  determine  whether 
religion  shall  or  shall  not  be  ;  it  is  so  much  a  product  and 
decree  of  Nature  that  it  will  be  whatever  any  individual 
may  desire  or  decide.  But  its  quality  or  character,  its 
opportumtv,  form,  or  line  of  development  may  be  powerfully 
influenced  by  the  direct  or  indirect  action  of  persons.  To 
illustrate  this  would  be  to  write  the  historv  of  almost  all 


224  THE   CREATIVE   PERSONALITY 

religions  ;  but  some  remarkable  phenomena  may  be  simply 
noted.  In  religions  which  emphasize  the  immanent  idea 
creative  personalities  have  been  rarer  than  in  those  which 
emphasize  the  transcendental.  There  is  no  land  or  people 
so  steeped  in  religion  as  the  Indian  ;  all  their  hopes  and 
aspirations  move  in  obedience  to  its  will ;  their  literature  has 
been  made  by  it,  their  social  order  embodies  it ;  but  the 
really  remarkable  thing  is  that,  while  the  religious  person, 
now  as  teacher,  now  as  reformer,  is  everywhere  in  the  history 
of  India,  the  creative  personality  has  but  rarely  appeared, 
and  in  a  transcendent  degree  has  appeared  but  once  in 
its  whole  history.  On  the  other  hand,  peoples  with  less  of 
the  genius  for  religion  have  had  persons  of  vaster  influence 
on  the  world's  history.  The  small  tribe  of  the  Jews  produced 
the  prophets  of  Israel  and  the  apostles  of  the  Christian 
faith  ;  a  small  tribe  in  Arabia,  shut  off  from  cosmopolitan 
influences,  produced  Mohammed  ;  China,  at  a  remote  period 
in  her  life,  produced  Lao  Tsze  and  Kung  Fu  Tsze  ;  ancient 
Persia  had  its  great  personality  in  Zoroaster.  The  reason 
at  once  of  the  more  frequent  emergence  and  the  vital 
power  of  the  creative  personality  in  religions  which  are 
governed  by  the  transcendental  idea,  may  lie  here — that 
they  emphasize  in  so  much  higher  a  degree  personal  free- 
dom and  will,  while  where  immanence  is  so  construed  as 
to  depersonalize  deity  he  becomes  the  synonym  for  necessity 
both  in  man  and  in  Nature.  The  things  that  are  must  be, 
and  there  is  no  power  in  man  to  change  their  course.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  transcendental  idea  is  an  expression 
not  of  force  but  of  will ;  though  all  else  may  be  necessitated, 
yet  God  is  free.  Hence,  though  in  the  popular  judgment 
fatalism  may  mark  Islam,  yet  it  is  not  the  fatalism  of  an 
inexorable  mechanism  or  blind  necessity,  but  of  an  irre- 
sistible will.  Where  God  necessitates  but  is  not  necessitated, 
there  must  ever  exist  the  possibility  of  personalities  appear- 
ing which  He  creates  and  sends  to  accomplish  large  things 


HIS   REASON   AND   CAUSE  225 

for  religion  ;  where  the  cycle  of  life  is  a  necessity  tempered 
by  the  contingencies  of  a  social  or  sacerdotal  order,  there  is 
no  room  for  the  free  personality  and  its  creative  and  modify- 
ing work. 

These  are  a  few  of  the  factors  of  formal  change  in  religion. 
But  within  the  local  there  lives  and  moves  what  may  he 
termed  a  universal  Spirit,  a  life  we  may  feel  rather  than 
analyze.  God  has  never  left  Himself  without  a  witness.  He 
has  manifested  Himself  to  men  ;  has  written  His  name  in 
their  hearts,  and  they  have  never  ceased  to  be  conscious  of 
the  name.  The  attempt  to  read  it  may  have  resulted  in  the 
strangest  misreadings,  in  grotesque  interpretations  and  appli- 
cations ;  but  from  the  name  and  the  necessity  of  finding  Him 
whose  name  it  is,  man  has  never  been  able,  nor  indeed  has 
ever  wished,  to  escape.  And  as  the  name  is  there,  He  who 
wrote  it  has  never  forgotten  His  own  handiwork,  and  has 
moved  in  men  and  nations  like  the  spirit  which  quickens  the 
understanding.  And  now  and  then  man  becomes  conscious 
of  this  quickening  spirit,  and  a  change  passes  over  him  ;  a 
vision  of  higher  ideals  than  the  mean  greeds  and  ambitions 
of  his  secular  life  possesses  his  soul.  On  such  occasions  a 
tidal  wave  of  change  sweeps  over  the  face  of  humanity,  and 
by  some  mystic  method  moves  from  east  to  west,  or  from  north 
to  south,  over  peoples  who  had  never  heard  of  each  other's 
existence.  In  one  century  we  may  find  great  prophets  in 
Israel,  a  great  religious  reformer  in  India  and  another  in 
China,  and  all  humanity  moving  to  new  religious  impulses; 
and  there  are  seasons  when  one  race  seems  to  dominate  all 
other  races,  to  be  for  a  season  the  master  ot  the  world,  till, 
defeated  bv  its  verv  victories,  it  declines  into  a  deeper  obscurity 
than  that  from  which  it  had  emerged.  Where  are  the  <kill 
and  the  wealth  and  the  statesmanship  of  ancient  Kgvpt  ? 
whrre  the  military  prowess  of  Assyria  and  Babvlonia  ?  \\herc 
the  ethical  passion  and  imperial  ambitions  of  ancient  IVr-da? 
where  the  art  and  poetry  of  Greece  ?  where  the  statesmanship 

P.C.K.  If) 


226  DIVINE   PURPOSE   IN   HISTORY 

and  military  discipline  and  genius  of  ancient  Rome?  And 
yet  do  they  not  all  live  in  the  men  and  peoples  who  are 
alive  to-day,  and  alive  in  a  manner  impossible  without  these 
earlier  states  and  peoples  ?  The  ebb  and  flow  in  the  life  of 
humanity  is  a  marvellous  thing,  and  the  special  moment  at 
which  a  man  is  born  has,  in  relation  to  the  great  tides  that 
mark  the  onward  movement  of  society,  a  special  and  peculiar 
significance.  And  what  do  these  things  signify  but  that 
changes  do  not  come  unbidden, — that  the  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty  is  a  factor  in  human  destiny,  and  that  the  God 
who  works  in  history  fulfils  Himself  in  many  ways? 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE   PHILOSOPHY  OF   RELIGION 

B.    THE  HISTORICAL  RELIGIONS 

THE  analyses  and  discussions  conducted  in  the  preceding 
chapter  may  be  said  to  have  introduced  us  to  the 
problems  co-ordinated  under  the  terms  "  the  Philosophy  of 
Religion."  What  is  so  named  may  now  be  defined  as  the 
dialectical  or  reasoned  interpretation  of  the  consciousness  of 
man  as  expressed  in  his  religions  and  unfolded  in  their 
history.  As  such  its  function  is  to  study  mind  in  religion,  in 
order  that  it  may  the  better  explain  religion  through  mind. 
Now  the  mind  it  studies  is  a  much  more  concrete  and  real 
object  than  the  abstract  mind  which  the  metaphysician  tries, 
speculatively,  to  read  ;  which  the  psychologist  attempts,  ex- 
perimentally, to  observe  and  analyze  ;  and  which  the  anthro- 
pologist, imaginatively,  invites  nature  to  insert  or  inscribe  in 
his  primitive  man.  For  history  may  be  described  as  the 
incarnation  or  externalization  of  this  mind,  and  the  events 
or  acts  it  records  as  the  steps  and  process  of  its  self- 
revelation.  For  though  these  acts  may  have  been  done 
by  persons,  yet  the  persons  have  not  been  isolated  per- 
sonalities, but  rather  the  concatenated  and  rational  vehicles 
of  a  single  and  coherent  power,  which  could  operate  in  a 
multitude  of  forms  without  losing  its  essential  unity.  If, 
then,  we  conceive  the  languages,  the  literatures,  the  institu- 
tions, the  laws,  the  societies,  and  the  beliefs  of  peoplrs  as 


228  AS  SPEECH  TO   DIALECTS 

so  much  undesigned  and  spontaneous  racial  autobiography, 
it  is  evident  that  if  these  can  be  accurately  interpreted 
they  will  enable  us  to  live  within  the  racial  mind,  and 
look  at  the  world  through  its  eyes.  We  have  already 
argued  that  the  problems  of  individual  are  one  with  those 
of  collective  experience  ;  but  though  they  be  identical,  yet  it 
is  no  paradox  to  say  that  they  grow  more  rather  than  less 
capable  of  solution  by  being  extended  in  scope  and  incre'ased 
in  complexity.  For  while  the  universe  does  not  become  a 
mystery  to  man  till  man  has  become  a  mystery  to  himself, 
yet,  though  he  does  not  cease  to  be  mysterious,  he  becomes  a 
more  intelligible  mystery  when  viewed  through  the  whole 
than  when  regarded  as  a  separate  and  independent  atom. 
The  very  fact  that  it  is  those  immense  idealisms  which 
we  call  the  religions  that  have  been  the  main  factors  in  the 
organization  of  society,  speaks  volumes  as  to  the  intrinsic 
quality  of  the  spirit  which  we  call  human  nature. 

We  return,  then,  to  the  position,  that  there  can  be  a 
philosophy  of  religion  only  when  the  religions  are  historically 
studied.  Without  history  the  philosophy  would  move  as  in 
a  dream,  attempting  to  grapple  with  the  shadows  of  a  world 
unrealized ;  while  without  thought  history  would  have  no 
vision  in  its  eyes,  would  find  no  reason  in  what  it  saw, 
would  simply  aggregate  matter  whose  atoms  were,  singly, 
insignificant  and,  collectively,  an  unordered  heap.  We  may 
say,  then,  in  terms  suggested  by  one  of  Kant's  most  famous 
dicta,  the  philosophy  without  the  history  is  empty,  the 
history  without  the  philosophy  is  blind  ;  or,  changing  the 
figure  for  one  more  illuminative,  the  religions  are  like  a 
multitude  of  dialects  into  which  man's  aboriginal  speech 
or  faculty  of  speech  has  broken.  The  concern  of  philosophy 
is  with  the  speech,  or  the  faculty  that  made  the  speech, 
for  without  it  articulate  and  intelligible  dialects  could  not 
have  been.  The  concern  of  history  is  with  the  dialects, 
for  without  them  speech  could  have  had  no  actual  or 


SO   SPIRIT   TO   THE   RELIGIONS  229 

continuous  life.  The  universal  is  realized  in  and  by  the 
individual  ;  but  the  individual  without  the  universal  would 
be  simply  an  uninterpretable  unit.  History,  then,  has  to 
do  with  the  religions  as  children  of  time  and  place,  each 
with  its  own  ancestry  and  kinships,  its  own  accent  and 
idiom,  its  own  features  and  idiosyncrasies,  its  own  antece- 
dents and  environment ;  but  philosophy  has  to  do  with  the 
causes  which  made  all  religion  possible,  and  the  conditions 
which  turned  the  possible  into  actual  religions.  The  two 
are  thus  necessary  to  a  complete  synthesis,  for  we  can  as 
little  explain  history  by  a  method  of  isolation  or  individua- 
tion  as  we  can  interpret  nature  by  a  process  of  physical 
or  metaphysical  abstraction,  which  conceives  force,  but  will 
not  recognize  any  correlation  of  forces.  Without  the  accu- 
rate knowledge  of  local  forms,  the  character  and  behaviour 
of  the  universal  cause  could  never  be  ascertained  ;  and 
without  the  investigation  of  roots  and  reasons,  the  enquiry 
into  why  things  are  what  they  are  and  why  they  behave 
as  they  do,  research  into  local  forms  would  lose  almost 
all  its  scientific  worth.  But  the  more  we  seek  for  religion 
some  root  in  reason,  personal  and  collective,  the  less  can 
we  conceive  any  religion  as  void  or  vain,  an  irrational 
chance  or  mischance,  which  has  come,  no  one  knows  whence, 
to  walk  the  earth  with  aimless  feet  and  vanish,  whither  no 
one  can  tell.  For  if  we  hold  with  Bunsen  that  God,  which 
is  but  another  name  for  Reason,  "  and  not  the  devil  or  his 
Punchinello — Accident— governs  the  world,"  '  then  we  must 
conclude  that  just  as  there  is  a  divine  thought  in  nature,  so 
there  is  a  divine  idea  in  the  religions  ;  and  could  \ve  find  and 
express  this  idea,  we  should  have  the  very  vindication  we 
most  need  of  God's  ways  to  men. 

1  Christianity  and  Mankind,  vol.  iii.  p.  4. 


230  UNIVERSAL  EMPIRES   DO   NOT 

§   I.     Religions  as  National  and  Missionary 

I.  One  of  the  most  obvious  and  familiar  classifications  of 
the  historical  religions  is  into  the  local  or  national,  and  the 
universal  or  missionary.  The  local  or  national  live  within  a 
defined  geographical  area,  and  are  so  bound  up  with  the 
speech,  the  customs,  the  institutions,  the  special  modes  of 
thought,  the  social  and  political  order  of  the  particular 
peoples  who  inhabit  it,  that  they  could  not  exist  apart  from 
these  conditions  ;  while  they  are  at  once  jealous  of  all  foreign 
intermeddling  or  intermixture  and  void  of  the  ambition  to 
become  the  faith  of  the  alien.  The  universal  religions,  on 
the  contrary,  refuse  to  be  limited  by  a  land  or  people,  by  any 
special  speech  or  local  usage  ;  and  are  by  nature  expansive, 
seeking  to  comprehend  man  simply  as  man,  and  to  live  by 
being  believed  rather  than  merely  observed.  The  local 
religions  are  an  infinite  multitude,  while  the  universal  are  but 
three.  Of  these,  two — Buddhism  and  Christianity — possess 
independently  the  missionary  spirit ;  but  the  third,  Moham- 
medanism, derived  its  idea  from  the  second.  The  first  is  the 
product  of  the  Aryan,  the  second  and  third  of  the  Semitic 
race.  The  antecedents  of  the  first  lie  in  a  religion  whose 
keynote  is  monism  and  the  immanence  of  Deity  ;  the  ante- 
cedents of  the  second,  which  are  in  a  large  degree  also  those 
of  the  third,  lie  in  a  religion  whose  keynote  is  monotheism 
and  the  transcendence  of  God.  And  each  owes  its  special 
characteristics  to  the  religion  out  of  which  it  grew ;  the 
features  of  the  parent  faith  are  visible  in  the  face  of  its 
offspring. 

But  this,  like  all  obvious  classifications,  is  neither  accurate 
nor  descriptive.  For  there  are  national  religions  that  may  be 
termed  missionary,  while  no  missionary  religion  either  has 
been  or  can  be  independent  of  national  forms  and  the  service 
of  particular  nationalities.  It  may  also  be  added  that  there 
are  religions  \vhich  have  inspired  universal  empires,  though 


BEGET   UNIVERSAL   RELIGIONS  231 

without  becoming  universal  themselves.  It  is,  indeed,  one  of 
the  curious  facts  of  history  that  dreams  of  universal  empire 
are  older  and  more  common  than  the  vision  of  a  universal 
religion;  and  it  is  instructive  as  well  as  curious  that  the 
peoples  who  dreamed  of  empire  were  never  possessed  of  the 
vision,  while  those  who  had  the  vision  were  untouched  by  the 
lust  of  secular  power.  Thus  the  Egyptian  kings  subdued 
and  plundered  their  weaker  neighbours  in  honour  of  Horus 
or  of  Amon  Ra  ;  the  mighty  potentates  of  Mesopotamia 
conquered  and  enslaved  states  to  the  greater  glory  of  Bel 
or  Assur,  Merodach  or  Nebo  ,  Persia  overcame  Assyria, 
Babylon,  and  Egypt,  and  invaded  Greece  in  the  name  of 
her  great  god  ;  the  Greek  carried  his  language  and  his  arts 
to  farthest  Ind,  and  the  Roman  legions  bore  the  Roman 
eagles,  and  with  them  Roman  law  and  order,  throughout 
the  civilized  world.  But  these  empires  did  not  dream  of 
establishing  their  religions  where  they  imposed  their  wills. 
Their  ambition  was  not  to  reign  over  mind  and  con- 
science, but  simply  to  be  sovereign  in  civil  affairs.  The 
peoples,  indeed,  were  ready  enough  now  to  mock  at  alien 
deities,  thus  expressing  their  scorn  or  hatred  of  the  states 
they  defeated  or  were  defeated  by  ;  now  to  borrow  or  pro- 
pitiate them,  and  now  to  endow  them  with  the  names  of 
their  own  gods  ;  now  to  imitate  alien  cults  or  turn  them 
into  mysteries  which  should  do  for  the  initiated  what 
their  national  worship  failed  to  accomplish.  But  the  wisest 
of  all  the  world-empires  most  scrupulously  respected  all  the 
legal  rights  of  the  religions  native  to  the  regions  it  con- 
quered, and  did  not  allow  Jove  to  reign  over  any  of  the 
lands  it  governed.  Instead  the  state  itself  underwent  a 
species  of  apotheosis,  the  emperor  became  dints,  and  the 
citi/ens  were,  if  not  so  tolerant,  yet  so  devout  as  to  naturalize 
in  Rome  the  deities  of  other  lands.  And  so  it  seems  as  if 
civil  ambition  were  fatal  to  religious  expansion,  and  to  nurse 
a  missionary  empire  were  to  cultivate  a  restricted  faith. 


232         NATIONAL   RELIGIONS   MISSIONARY 

2.  But  it  was  said  above  that  a  national  might  also  be 
a  missionary  religion.  The  ideas  do  not  constitute  a  true 
antithesis,  for  a  religion  may  spread  by  a  process  as  well  of 
absorption  as  of  diffusion,  i.e.  a  religion  may  so  assume  new 
families  or  tribes  into  itself  as  to  outgrow  its  original  limits, 
yet  without  departing  from  its  original  type  and  home. 
Thus  Brahmanism  is  so  intensely  racial  that  it  may  well  be 
described  as  the  apotheosis  of  blood,  or  as  the  pride  of  race 
deified.  There  is  no  law  so  inexorable  or  so  pitiless  as 
the  law  of  Caste  ;  it  binds  the  Hindu  peoples,  even  though 
split  into  a  multitude  of  states,  into  a  unity  more  absolute 
than  the  most  imperious  despotism  has  ever,  or  could  ever 
anywhere  have,  achieved.  The  religion  has  not,  indeed,  any 
outlook  beyond  India  ;  it  does  not  love  the  sea ;  to  cross  it 
and  mix  with  alien  peoples  is  to  lose  caste  ;  it  is  sufficient 
for  itself,  does  not  seek  to  be  known,  has  no  wish  that  the 
foreigner  should  know  it ;  it  told  its  meaning  reluctantly, 
with  many  a  protest  that  the  secrets  wrung  from  it  were  not 
its  genuine  and  veritable  mind,  and  that  only  the  twice-born 
man  could  seek  and  know  the  truth.  Yet,  in  spite  of  this 
deification  of  race,  nay,  perhaps  because  of  it,  Brahmanism  is 
in  India  missionary  to  a  degree  and  in  a  way  that  Islam  is 
not.  The  latter  has  the  strength  and  the  severity  of  a  system 
which  has  been  knit  together  and  forced  into  its  place  by 
a  succession  of  imperious  wills,  creating  a  fanaticism  as 
imperious  as  their  own  ;  but  the  former  lives  and  grows  like 
an  organism  perfectly  adapted  to  its  environment — plastic, 
elastic,  invincible  as  the  waves  which  break  against  the  rock 
only  to  return  unwearied,  increased  in  volume,  massed  into 
rhythmic  ranks,  to  break  unbroken  again  and  yet  again. 
And  so  Brahmanism  grows  irresistibly,  absorbs  tribes,  steals 
into  the  jungles,  creeps  up  the  mountains,  modifies  the 
Mohammedan,  assimilates  the  hill-man,  ever  enlarging  its 
numbers,  yet  never  leaving  its  home.  And  as  in  India  so  in 
China,  where  the  ancestral  religion  may  be  described  as  the 


MISSIONARY   RELIGIONS   NATIONAL         233 

apotheosis  of  the  family  as  distinguished  from  the  race. 
Here,  too,  tribes  have  been  absorbed,  other  cults  and  religions 
have  been  assimilated,  the  magic  of  Taoism  has  been  allowed 
to  stand  beside  the  wisdom  of  Confucius,  and  the  word  and 
ritual  of  Buddha  have  supplemented  the  simple  speech  of 
both  ;  but  the  ancient  customs  still  live,  observed  by  hundreds 
of  millions  where  once  they  were  followed  by  tens.  These 
religions  are  national,  yet  they  are  missionary  ;  though  their 
increment  comes  by  absorption,  yet  the  absorbed  are  the 
converted,  changed  from  heathen  into  children  of  the 
faith. 

3.  But  it  is  no  less  true  that  the  most  aggressively  mis- 
sionary religion  has  a  radius  within  which  it  lives  most 
vigorously,  races  it  commands  and  possesses  most  completely, 
and  social  or  political  conditions  which  it  feels  most  con- 
genial to  its  spirit  and  most  favourable  to  its  growth.  Thus 
Buddhism  moves  within  a  well-defined  area,  which  it  has 
never  been  able  to  break  through  or  live  beyond.  It  spread 
very  early  to  southern  India  ;  crossed  the  sea  from  Ceylon 
to  Burma  and  Siam  ;  in  the  north  it  pierced  the  passes  of 
the  mighty  Himalayas,  and  moved  eastward  to  China  and 
Japan.  But  the  enthusiasm  of  its  missionaries  failed  to 
touch  the  free  and  wandering  tribes  of  Central  Asia,  or  the 
cold  and  more  rational  mind  of  Persia,  though  both  were 
destined  a  thousand  years  later  to  put  their  stiff  necks 
under  the  yoke  of  the  stern  Arabian  prophet.  We  may 
say,  then,  that  Buddhism  is  a  missionary,  but  not  a  uni- 
versal religion, — it  is  not  even  generic-ally  Asiatic,  though 
specifically  Oriental.  Its  intellectual  basis  and  superstructure, 
the  ethics  it  inculcates,  the  ideal  of  life  it  enjoins,  and  the 
type  of  society  it  would  create  or  realize,  arc,  while  distinc- 
tive of  the  land  of  its  birth  and  congenial  to  the  peoples 
it  has  converted,  yet  so  foreign  and  so  offensive  to  the 
more  strenuous  Western  mind  that  it  could  not  persuade  it 
to  believe  or  awaken  within  it  any  sympathetic  response. 


234  RELIGIONS   OF   EAST  AND  WEST 

And  Western  does  not  here  mean  European  ;  it  means  to 
the  West  of  India,  and  includes  races  which  gave  to  Asia  its 
oldest  civilization  and  its  most  masterful  empires  as  well  as 
its  last  and  most  aggressive  religion.  It  was  not  its  white 
face  that  made  Europe  insusceptible  to  the  eloquence  of  the 
dusky  Hindu,  but  it  was  what  the  Hindu  preached.  His 
word  was  a  gospel  to  his  own  people,  but  a  meaningless 
mystery  to  minds  with  another  history  and  a  different  out- 
look on  life. 

The  missionary  and  universal  features  in  Christianity  will 
be  discussed  later ;  but  here  it  must  be  noted  that  it  seems 
to  the  Orient  as  distinctively  Occidental  as  the  religions  of 
India  or  China  seem  Oriental  to  us.  We  may  argue  that 
intellectually  it  is  of  no  place  or  time;  that  historically  it  is 
Asiatic  in  origin  ;  that  its  founders  were  Semites,  its  first 
preachers  and  earliest  disciples  Jews  ;  but  this  is  to  the 
Hindu  or  the  Chinaman  to  speak  ancient  history,  not  living 
fact.  It  comes  to  India  from  the  land  and  in  the  speech  of 
its  conquerors  ;  to  China  in  the  ship  and  the  raiment  of  the 
merchants  who  trade  for  gain,  and  who  would  for  the  sake 
of  profit  break  up  the  most  ancient  civilization  in  the  world. 
And  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  peoples  judge  as  they  see, 
and  hate  because  they  so  judge.  It  would  be  wonderful  were 
it  to  be  otherwise.  Christianity  comes  to  them  speaking 
the  tongue  of  Europe,  thinking  with  its  mind,  baptized  into 
its  spirit,  charged  with  its  ambitions, — if  not  expounded,  yet 
annotated,  illustrated,  and  made  lucid  more  by  its  soldiers, 
statesmen,  merchants,  and  magistrates  than  by  the  mis- 
sionaries whose  office  it  is  to  speak  up  for  the  religion.  The 
Eastern  peoples  cannot  see  it  because  the  Western  sunlight 
that  streams  through  it  has  got  into  their  eyes.  And  so  they 
feel  its  missionary  spirit  to  be  offensive  ;  it  is  part  of  the  in- 
solence which  marks  the  raw  aggressiveness  of  the  young 
and  inexperienced  West.  They  identify  the  religion  with  the 
people  most  active  in  its  service,  and  think  of  it  as  only  a 


THE   UNIVERSAL  AND  THE   LOCAL          235 

national   faith   which    European  vanity  has,  simply   because 
the  faith  is  Europe's,  mistaken  for  the  world's. 

§    II.      The  Idea  and  the  Institution  in  Religion 

I.  It  is  evident,  then,  that  our  analysis  must  be  carried 
farther  back  until  we  reach  principles  of  differentiation  at 
once  simpler  and  more  determinative  than  can  be  expressed 
by  terms  like  local  and  universal,  national  and  missionary. 
And  here  we  begin  by  drawing  a  distinction : — to  use 
national  forms  and  to  be  served  by  particular  nationalities 
is  a  very  different  thing  from  being  either  dependent  on 
them  or  identical  with  them.  If  a  religion  were  incapable 
of  assuming  a  national  or  local  form,  it  would  be  disqualified 
from  doing  any  good  to  the  nation  ;  but  if  it  were  incapable 
of  assuming  any  other  form  than  this  one,  it  would  be  unfit 
to  be  of  service  outside  the  particular  nation,  or  simply  to 
man  as  man.  A  universal  religion  ma}-  be  described  as  one 
capable  of  being  possessed  by  any  people,  but  incapable  of 
being  the  possession  of  any  one  people  ;  while  the  mark  of 
a  particular  religion  is  fitness  for  one  state  or  race  and  un- 
fitness  for  any  other.  The  universal  addresses  man  as 
man,  is  able  to  speak  his  many  languages,  adapt  itself  to 
his  many  stages  of  culture,  live  within  his  many  environ- 
ments,— physical,  intellectual,  social,  political, — even  though 
it  may  be  for  the  purpose  of  ultimately  adjusting  them  to 
its  own  ideal  ;  but  the  local  can  use  no  more  than  one 
tongue,  live  within  but  one  body,  and  flourish  in  only  one 
environment.  In  other  words,  the  universal  emphasizes  the 
substantive,  the  ideal,  the  essential  ;  while  the  local  em- 
phasizes the  formal,  the  external,  what  we  may  term  the 
provincial  accent  and  the  dialectal  idiom.  Now,  the  analvsis 
of  religion  into  the  subjective  or  causal  elements,  and  the 
objective  or  caused,  revealed  certain  possibilities  of  emphasis 
in  actual  religions  :  they  may  accentuate  the  ideas,  the 
truths,  the  beliefs  which  constitute  their  reasonable  soul  ;  or 


236  CUSTOM   IN  GREEK   RELIGION 

they  may  accentuate  the  customs,  the  polity,  the  institutions, 
and  usages  which  form  their  visible  organism.  Where  the 
accent  falls  on  the  ideas  and  beliefs,  the  religion  is  more  or 
less  independent  of  place  ;  where  the  accent  falls  on  customs 
and  usages,  the  religion  is  local,  the  only  expansion  possible 
to  it  is  through  the  growth  or  diffusion  of  the  people,  the 
caste,  or  the  order  whose  institution  it  is.  The  mere  change 
of  accent  from  usage  to  belief  does  not  indeed  by  itself 
distinguish  a  universal  from  a  local  religion  ;  that  depends 
more  on  the  quality  of  the  ideas,  the  character  of  the 
ideals,  and  their  power  to  command  a  suitable  embodi- 
ment, personal  and  collective.  The  mere  development  of 
the  intellectual  contents  of  a  national  religion  will  not 
universalize  it— may  indeed  dissolve  it  as  custom  without 
enlarging  it  as  faith.  Thus  the  action  of  Greek  thought  was 
as  disintegrative  of  Greek  religion  as  it  was  later  re-integra- 
tive  of  the  Christian.  The  ideals  of  the  philosophical  intellect 
and  the  realities  of  religious  custom  formed  in  Greece  a 
contrast  that  soon  became  a  conflict.  What  the  religion  was 
we  know  only  in  part.  We  have  learned  since  Lobeck  to 
think  of  the  mysteries  as  shows  or  spectacles  rather  than  as 
schools  of  secret  wisdom  ;  but  we  forget  that  to  see  is  also 
to  learn,  and  that  what  is  true  of  the  mysteries  is  largely  true 
of  the  cults  as  a  whole  :  they  were  spectacles,  though  not 
always  edifying  spectacles.  The  student  who  studies  Greek 
religion  in  literature  or  in  art  may  with  Hegel  speak  of  it  as 
the  apotheosis  of  the  beautiful ;  but  the  man  of  cultivated 
reason  and  refined  feeling  who  saw  it  as  it  lived,  feared 
rather  its  power  to  deprave  the  passions  and  defile  the 
imagination  of  the  multitude.  Of  all  the  gods  of  antiquity 
the  Greek  were  the  most  human :  warriors  and  heroes,  fathers 
and  sons,  husbands  and  brothers,  magnified  men  all  of  them, 
no  one  immortal  in  his  own  right,  pure  by  nature  and  good 
by  choice.  The  poetry  which  describes  their  characters  and 
lives  was  the  only  sacred  history  the  people  knew,  yet  to  us 


AND  REASON   IN   GREEK   PHILOSOPHY       237 

it  is  the  most  secular  poetry  in  all  ancient  literature.  But 
the  discovery  made  by  philosophy,  that  the  ideals  of  the 
reason  were  one  with  the  ideas  fundamental  in  religion, 
begot  a  sense  which  the  worship  of  the  temple  and  the 
mythology  alike  offended.  With  the  vision  that  spared  no 
illusion  the  Greek  thinkers  saw  that  two  things  were  needful : 
religion  must  be  saved  by  being  purged  from  its  coarser 
customs,  and  men  must  be  got  to  think  of  the  gods  better 
than  they  thought  of  themselves.  It  was  the  necessity,  yet 
impossibility,  of  doing  these  two  things  that  forced  the 
thought  to  dissolve  the  religion  it  could  not  refine.  Yet  what 
it  failed  to  accomplish  then  it  achieved  later.  The  Greek 
thinkers  bound  once  for  all  thought  and  belief,  reason  and 
deity,  man's  highest  idea  and  his  chief  object  of  worship, 
indissolubly  together.  They  made  him  feel  that  he  could 
never  think  his  best  unless  he  thought  worthily  of  his  God, 
and  that  the  truth  which  it  was  the  function  of  the  reason 
to  seek  was,  when  found,  a  law  for  the  government  of  life. 
They  coined  terms  that  were  to  be  used  in  building  up  a 
more  universal  theology  than  their  own,  and  so  evoked  what 
we  may  term  the  religion  latent  in  man  as  to  make  it 
the  inalienable  heritage  of  the  race.  To  make  a  theology 
may  be  a  smaller  thing  than  to  found  a  religion,  but  it  is 
only  through  its  theology  that  the  religion  can  have  any 
reality  for  the  intellect  or  any  authority  for  the  conscience. 
Theologies  apart  from  religion  are  but  fields  for  the  exercise 
of  the  speculative  reason  ;  religions  apart  from  theologies  are 
but  sensuous  arts,  the  sanctioned  amusements  of  the  vulgar. 
Hence,  though  Greek  thought  dissolved  the  consuetudinary 
religion  of  Greece,  yet  by  laying  the  basis  of  every  future 
theology  it  performed  a  service  so  eminent  that  it  deserves 
to  be  described  as  the  contributory  creator  of  a  religion 
qualified,  by  the  degree  in  which  the  Deity  it  worships  is  one 
with  the  highest  ideal  of  the  reason  and  the  supreme  law 
of  the  conscience,  to  be  at  once  missionary  and  universal. 


238  OPPOSED   ACTION   OF  CUSTOM 

2.  But  the  principle  which  has  just  been  stated  involves 
another,  its  complement  and  counterpart :  the  religion  that 
emphasizes  the  formal  at  the  expense  of  the  substantive 
element  loses  in  moral  quality  just  as  it  gains  in  local 
features  or  provincial  character.  Worship  and  belief  stand 
to  each  other  as  language  and  thought  ;  as  man  thinks  of 
Deity,  so  he  worships,  but  it  is  from  the  worship,  and  not 
from  the  schools,  that  the  multitudes  learn  what  to  think 
or  believe  concerning  Him,  as  well  as  the  terms  on  which 
He  will  accept  their  homage  and  consent  to  be  their  friend. 
But  worship  is  precisely  the  point  where  man  is  most 
potent,  where  his  fears,  passions,  impulses  of  hope  and 
despair  have  freest  play  ;  and  where  he  finds  it  therefore 
so  much  easier  to  accommodate  the  usages  he  follows  to 
his  own  weakness  than  to  make  or  keep  them  worthy  of 
the  majesty  of  God.  The  very  desire  to  stand  well  with 
God,  when  he  knows  he  ought  not  so  to  stand,  leads  man 
to  the  use  of  means  for  appeasement  or  propitiation  con- 
gruous to  his  own  nature,  and  so  more  or  less  ignoble  ;  and 
the  use  of  the  ignoble  in  worship  by  depraving  the  notion 
of  Deity  lowers  both  the  man  and  the  religion,  As  a 
simple  matter  of  fact,  which  the  scientific  student  of  religions 
will  be  the  last  to  dispute,  the  agencies  which  do  most  to 
deteriorate  and  demoralize  religion  are  the  usages,  the 
sacrifices  and  the  offerings  designed  to  reconcile  man  to 
God.  As  a  rule,  when  man  attempts  to  do  the  greatest 
offices,  he  tends  to  do  them  in  a  way  which  he  himself  feels 
to  be  agreeable,  just  as  if  he  argued,  What  is  pleasant  to 
me  must  be  acceptable  to  the  Deity.  And  as  his  worship, 
like  his  word,  is  the  incarnation  of  ao  idea,  the  idea  it 
incarnates  is  his  interpretation  of  God,  the  kind  and  quality 
of  the  Being  he  wishes  to  please,  and  the  sort  of  things 
that  are  conceived  to  give  Him  pleasure.  A  purely  specu- 
lative idea  of  Deity  does  not  constitute  a  religion ;  it  is 
constituted  by  the  idea  which  is  realized  in  the  worship,  and 


AND  OF   THOUGHT   IN   RELIGION  239 

is  by  it  judged  or  redeemed.  Thus  the  speculative  idea 
of  ancient  Egypt  was  refined  and  even  noble  :  the  ethics  in 
the  Book  of  the  Dead  are  perhaps  the  most  exalted  ethics 
in  ancient  religion  ;  but  the  worship  of  the  ox,  the  ape, 
the  cat,  the  crocodile,  and  similar  beasts,  with  all  the  bestial 
ministrations  it  involved,  stamped  the  religion  with  a  char- 
acter and  made  it  exercise  an  influence  which  suited  its 
worship  rather  than  its  speculative  idea  or  its  theoretical 
ethics.  Greek  thought  laboured  hard  to  redeem  Greek 
religion  from  the  worship  that  depraved  it,  but  it  laboured 
in  vain.  Xenophanes  reproached  Homer  and  Hesiod  for 
attributing  to  the  gods  things  men  held  to  be  dishonourable 
and  disgraceful.  Herakleitos  condemned  the  men  who 
prayed  to  images,  or  sang  the  shameful  phallic  hymns  to 
Dionysos,  and  the  priests,  priestesses,  and  mystery-mongers 
who  traded  on  men's  fears.  Plato  described  the  popular 
mythology  as  "  lies  and  bad  lies,"  and  proposed  to  blot  out 
of  Homer  the  stories  that  did  not  become  the  good,  the 
images,  acts  and  indecencies,  unseemly  in  all,  but  most  of 
all  unseemly  in  Deity,  which  appealed  to  the  more  ignoble 
qualities  in  men — the  fear  of  death,  contempt  of  virtue,  lust, 
irreverence,  hate,  treachery,  cowardice,  insensibility  to  the 
true  and  tlu  beautiful.  The  Stoic,  who  consciously  lived 
under  the  reign  of  an  ethical  ideal,  tried  to  get  rid  of  the 
immoralities  in  the  popular  beliefs,  which  the  worship 
articulated,  by  allegorizing  the  mythology,  turning  it  into 
an  elaborate  and  finely  articulated  parable  in  which  the 
ancients  had  stored  their  wisdom  and  out  of  which  the 
moderns  were  to  draw  it  like  honey  from  the  honeycomb. 
And  did  not  the  greatest  of  the  Epicureans,  the  Roman 
Lucretius,  because  he  so  loved  beauty  and  truth,  hate  re- 
ligion, which  had  so  much  power  to  terrorize  and  deprave, 
but  none  to  elevate  and  ennoble,  and  which  could  only 
lower  with  baleful  eyes  from  the  four  quarters  of  the 
heavens  upon  the  unhappy  race  of  mortals?  And  as  with 


240  GOD   AS   DETERMINATIVE   IDEA 

ancient  Egypt  and  Greece,  so  with  modern  India.  There 
are  Brahmans  who  think  high  thoughts,  and  dream  sublime 
dreams,  and  conceive  Deity  as  pure  Being,  whom  to  know  is 
highest  bliss.  But  they  do  not  represent  the  religion  which 
is  known  as  Hinduism  ;  with  it  their  Supreme  has  only  the 
remotest  speculative  concern.  The  god  who  is  worshipped  in 
the  temple  is  not  the  Brahma  of  thought  ;  but  it  is  the  wild 
and  furious  Kali,  or  the  mighty  and  excited  yet  ascetic  Siva, 
or  the  golden-haired  and  swift-moving  and  gracious  Vishnu, 
or  Krishna  of  the  many  loves  and  the  invincible  life,  and  the 
multitude  of  similar  deities  that  the  pujari  waits  on  and  the 
people  pray  to  and  praise.  And  the  worship  is  as  the  gods 
are,  and  the  religion  is  as  the  worship  and  the  gods.  The 
idea  that  does  not  penetrate,  purify,  and  command  these 
may  be  an  object  of  thought,  but  is  no  part  of  religion  ;  the 
religion  which  does  not  absorb  the  highest  thought,  at  once 
refining  it  and  refined  by  it,  is  divorced  from  reason  and 
morals,  and  has  ceased  to  guide  and  inspire  man's  better  life. 
It  may  continue  a  worship  or  a  usage,  but  it  has  ceased  to 
be  in  the  true  and  proper  sense  a  religion. 

§   III.     The  Idea  of  God  in  Religion 

A.  BUDDHISM 

I.  The  ultimate  principle,  then,  which  determines  the 
character  and  quality  of  a  religion,  is  the  object  it  worships, 
or,  to  use  the  old  simple  and  concrete  term,  its  idea  of  God. 
Worship  is  essentially  an  act  and  process  of  reciprocity,  a 
giving  and  a  receiving  ;  in  it  man  surrenders  himself  to  God, 
that  God  may  communicate  of  His  grace  to  man  and  realize 
in  him  His  will.  But  this  reciprocity  signifies  that  each  term 
of  the  relation  is  a  person,  each  conscious  of  the  other,  each 
seeking  to  find  and  know  the  other.  On  the  one  side  is  the 
person  who  admires  and  adores  and  implores  ;  on  the  other 
side  is  the  Person  who  can  see  the  speaker,  hear  his  voice, 


NO   RELIGION   A   PANTHEISM  241 

and  respond  to  his  appeals.  Hence  no  impersonal  Being 
whether  named  fate  or  chance,  necessity  or  existence,  the 
soul  or  the  whole,  can  be  an  object  of  worship,  though  it  may 
be  an  object  of  thought.  As  a  matter  of  historical  fact  no 
religion  has  ever  been  a  pantheism,  nor  has  any  pantheism 
ever  constituted  a  religion.  The  Hindu  philosophies,  for 
example — and  this  is  especially  true  of  the  Vedanta — are  just 
as  much  and  just  as  little  a  religion  as  are  the  speculations 
of  Plato  and  Plotinus,  of  Spinoza  and  Jacob  Boehme.  They 
are  of  the  nature  of  afterthoughts,  hypotheses  to  account  for 
things  as  they  are,  to  be  studied  and  criticised  as  products 
of  the  logical  intellect  rather  than  of  the  spontaneous  and 
inspired  reason.  Pantheism,  in  all  its  forms,  is  on  its  ideal 
side  the  deification  of  the  actual,  or  the  apotheosis  of  what  is, 
and  its  ultimate  truth  is  the  right  of  all  that  is,  whatever  it  is, 
to  be.  Hence  it  can  be  quite  consistently  used  to  vindicate 
the  most  multitudinous  polytheism  as  well  as  the  grossest 
cults  ;  but  what  it  cannot  do  is  to  take  the  place  of  any  one 
of  the  gods  or  cults  it  vindicates,  and  by  inviting  worship 
become  a  religion.  The  impersonal  must  be  personuli/e<l 
before  thought,  which  is  a  subjective  activity,  can  pass  into 
worship,  which  is  a  reciprocal  action,  or  a  process  of  converse 
and  intercourse  between  living  minds.  But  we  cannot  say 
of  monotheism  what  has  been  said  of  pantheism  ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  was  a  religion  before  it  became  a  philosophy,  and 
its  speculative  problems  and  perplexities  grew  out  of  its 
power  as  a  religious  faith.  The  notion  of  a  single  and 
supreme  God  obviously  involves  a  single  religion,  and  so 
cannot  be  used  to  justify  cither  a  multitude  of  deities,  or  the 
legitimacy  of  their  worship,  or  the  existence  of  an  actual 
which  is  in  conflict  with  its  ideal,  the  hoi}'  and  gracious 
character  of  a  God  who  must  be  personal  to  be  worshipped, 
but  who  can  be  most  easily  conceived  by  having  all  His 
personal  qualities  translated  into  empty  logical  abstractions. 
And  so  monotheism  has  a  much  harder  intellectual  problem 
P.C.K.  16 


242        WHETHER    BUDDHISM    IS   ATHEISTIC 

than  pantheism,  but  it  has  a  higher  religious  value  and 
greater  ethical  force.  For  since  what  is  does  not  satisfy  it, 
it  feels  bound  by  obedience  to  the  Supreme  Will  to  create 
what  ought  to  be.  The  historical  significance  of  this  idea  for 
religion  is,  therefore,  the  question  we  have  next  to  discuss. 

2.  But  before  we  can  proceed  we  must  deal  with  a  curious 
fact  which  may  seem  to  invalidate  both  our  argument  and 
the  conclusion  which  has  been  stated  as  the  premiss  of  the 
new  discussion  :  there  are,  as  we  have  seen,  two  original 
missionary  religions,  and  of  these  the  one  knows  no  God, 
while  the  other  knows  no  God  but  One.  Buddhism  has  been 
cited  as  an  illustration  of  how  a  highly  and  potently  ethical 
faith  can  exist  not  only  without  a  personal  God,  but  even 
without  any  deity  whatever.  Such  citation,  however,  is 
essentially  incorrect ;  for  nothing  could  be  farther  than  the 
soul  or  system  of  the  Buddha  from  what  we  mean  by 
atheism.  He  indeed  denied  both  the  pantheistic  and  the 
polytheistic  Brahmanisms  of  his  day,  with  the  authority  of  the 
sacred  books  on  which  they  were  based,  the  social  distinctions 
by  which  they  were  justified,  and  the  customs  by  which  they 
were  guarded  and  enforced  ;  but  to  turn  this  denial  into  the 
affirmation  of  an  atheism  is  a  feat  of  the  most  inconsequent 
logic.  We  maintain,  on  the  contrary,  that  his  denial  was  the 
expression  of  a  thoroughly  theistic  consciousness.  Buddha's 
relation  to  the  thought  and  religion  of  his  time  has  been 

O  0 

already  sketched.1  He  desired  to  escape  from  its  unethical 
metaphysics  and  sensuous  worship,  and  to  come  face  to  face 
with  the  moral  realities  of  existence  and  life.  This  he  did 
by  insisting  that  a  Supreme  Soul  which  had  no  direct  and 
helpful  relation  to  the  millions  of  souls  that  sorrowed,  was 
but  a  supreme  deceit ;  that  gods  who  were  void  of  moral 
qualities  were  but  empty  names  ;  that  a.  priesthood  which 
did  but  observe  ceremonies,  perform  sacrifices,  or  cultivate  a 
self-regarding  asceticism,  and  did  not  teach  men  who  were 
1  Ante,  pp.  118-121. 


THE    MORAL    ORDER    IS    GOD  243 

dying  in  ignorance,  was  but  a  master  of  make-believe ;  and 
that  such  a  social  system  as  caste  was  derogatory  to  the 
dignity  of  man,  the  harmony  of  society,  and  the  end  of 
existence.  And  so  he  became  a  preacher,  persuading  men 
to  believe  as  he  did  ;  he  praised  virtue,  practised  charity  and 
chastity,  lived  as  one  who  had  discovered  that  goodness  was 
the  secret  of  life  and  that  its  end  was  to  be  holy,  and  he 
showed  men  how  to  associate  for  its  attainment.  He  could 
not  free  himself  from  the  sub-conscious  mind  of  his  people  ; 
he  thought  as  they  did,  used  their  logic  to  disprove  their 
formulated  principles,  and  to  substitute  for  their  egoistic 
metaphysics  the  noblest  dream  of  altruistic  ethics  which  ever 
broke  upon  the  Oriental  spirit.  And  if  the  idea  of  a  sovereign 
moral  order,  too  inexorable  to  allow  the  evil-doer  to  escape 
out  of  its  hands  and  too  incorruptible  to  be  bribed  by 
sacrifices  into  connivance  at  sin,  be  a  theistic  idea,  then 
Buddha  was  a  transcendent  theist.  But  his  people  could  not 
stand  where  he  did  ;  his  philosophy  could  not  become  a 
religion  without  a  person  to  be  worshipped,  and  they,  by  a 
sublime  inconsistency  of  logic,  rose  in  the  region  of  the 
imagination  and  the  heart  to  a  higher  consistency,  and  deified 
the  denier  of  the  Divine.  Buddhism,  then,  may  be  described 
as  the  apotheosis  of  the  ethical  personality,  an  apotheosis 
spontaneous  and  imaginative  rather  than  rational  and  logical. 
It  could  not  be  justified  by  the  reason,  but  it  was  a  vivid 
reality  to  faith.  The  deification  was  none  the  less  complete 
that  the  religion  knew  no  God,  though  it  was  a  result  that  at 
once  paralyzed  the  intellect  and  quickened  and  satisfied  the 
heart.  For  on  the  speculative  side  Buddha  was  an  anomaly 
in  the  universe,  stood  where  no  being  could  have  been  con- 
ceived as  able  to  stand,  invested  with  higher  ethical  attributes 
and  enshrined  in  more  reverent  honour  than  India  had  ever 
ascribed  to  any  deity,  yet  without  having  any  of  the  physical 
qualities  or  functions  which  belong  to  a  divine  Being.  But 
on  the  religious  side  devotion  embalmed  him  in  the  richest 


244.         MONOTHEISM    AS    A   TRIBAL   CULT 

and  sweetest  mythology  known  to  man.  Tales  of  his  infinite 
tenderness  became  the  soul  of  his  religion,  which  lived  not  by 
the  worship  of  his  relics,  or  by  meditation  on  the  four  sublime 
truths,  or  by  the  many  attempts  to  stumble  into  the  noble 
eightfold  path,  or  by  the  subtle  disputations  of  the  doctors, 
but  by  the  faith  that  he  who  impersonated  its  ideal  was  a 
person  who  had  spoken,  who  could  hear  speech,  and  who 
would  himself  yet  return  to  accomplish  what  was  further 
needed  for  the  complete  saving  of  man. 


§   IV.     The  Idea  of  God  in  Religion 
B.  HEBRAIC  MONOTHEISM 

I.  We  turn  now  to  the  question  raised  by  the  action  of 
monotheism.  What  is  here  cardinal  is  the  fact  that  it 
appeared  as  a  belief  creating  a  religion,  not  as  a  rational  idea 
constituting  a  philosophy.  And  this  means  that  while  it 
rose  amid  a  people  to  whom  the  transcendental  idea  was 
native,1  it  began  to  live,  not  as  a  speculative  principle, 
but  as  a  belief  surcharged,  as  it  were,  with  personality. 
It  had  none  of  the  qualities  of  an  intellectual  concept, 
did  not  define  or  deny,  but  simply  affirmed,  as  of  a  definite 
person,  "  The  God  of  the  people  is  a  living  God,  and  acts, 
loves,  hates,  thinks,  wills  as  a  Being  must  who  has  made 
a  nation  His  special  concern  and  care."  And  here  another 
cardinal  fact  has  to  be  recognized,  that  the  belief,  unlike 
a  reasoned  philosophical  idea,  had  to  be  incorporated  in 
local  and  social  forms  ;  that  these  could  not  be  other  than 
ancient  and  ethnical ;  and  that  therefore  it  could  not  fail 
to  be  governed  in  its  life  and  growth  more  by  these  con- 
suetudinary forms  than  by  speculative  or  dialectical  forces. 
In  other  words,  in  a  world  where  all  religions  were  only 
local  and  tribal  cults,  it  was  only  as  such  a  cult  that  mono- 

1  Ante,  pp.  217-219. 


LIVED   IN   A    LOCAL    MEDIUM  245 

theism  could  begin  to  be ;  and  the  only  form  in  which 
it  could  be  held  by  men  who  were  neither  speculative  nor 
logical  thinkers,  but  only  sons  of  the  desert,  in  conscious- 
ness incoherent,  confused  though  convinced  in  mind,  was 
as  a  belief  in  the  superiority  and  sufficiency  of  their  God, 
not  as  an  articulated  notion  which  denied  reality  to  all 
other  gods. 

In  itself,  as  handled  by  analytic  thought,  the  belief  signified 
that  ideas  which  transcended  the  tribe  or  nation  had  come 
into  existence  ;  and  that  in  due  season,  by  the  sheer  pressure 
of  its  immanent  logic,  the  ancient  and  hitherto  invariable 
association  of  God  with  a  particular  people  and  its  special 
forms  of  worship  would  cease.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
belief  had  to  live  as  an  expansive  and  expulsive  power 
within  a  twofold  rigorously  limiting  medium  ;  first,  a  tribal 
consciousness  of  colossal  egoism  ;  and,  secondly,  the  institu- 
tions and  customs  of  the  tribe.  The  humane  force  in  Greece 
was  culture,  or  the  thought  which  so  interpreted  nature  as 
to  refine  man  ;  the  humane  force  in  Israel  was  faith,  or 
God  so  interpreted  as  to  be  incapable  of  restriction  to 
any  people  or  place.  Culture  was  personal,  and  so  in- 
dependent of  the  customs  it  disliked  or  the  la\vs  it  criticized  ; 
faith  was  collective,  could  become  worship  only  by  becoming 
social,  and  so  stooping  to  tribal  usages.  Thus  the  idea 
which  the  faith  expressed  the  polity  tended  to  restrict,  if 
not  to  deny.  The  impossibility  of  either  surrendering  or 
realizing  his  religious  ideal  is  the  tragedy  in  the  history  of 
Israel.  The  very  majesty  of  the  ideal  waked  the  fanaticism 
of  the  tribe,  and  begot  the  consciousness  that  it  had  a 
treasure  too  singular  and  sublime  to  be  entrusted  to  the 
hands  of  any  other  people.  In  theory  Jehovah  was  the  God 
of  the  whole  earth,  but  in  fact  lie  was  the  God  of  the  Jews 
only;  and  to  share  in  His  grace  and  covenant  other  peoples 
must  become  Jews,  it  was  not  enough  that  the}1  should  be 
men. 


246      MONOTHEISM   AND  THE   MYTHOLOGIES 

2.  But  even  under  these  conditions,  or  possibly  all  the 
more  because  of  them,  the  monotheistic  idea  revealed  its 
intrinsic  character.  We  may  study  its  action  first  in  the 
attitude  of  Hebrew  thought  to  man  and  history.  If  we 
examine  the  conception  which  underlies  the  structure  and 
narratives  of  the  Old  Testament,  we  shall  find,  as  the  peculiar 
and  characteristic  creation  of  the  theistic  idea,  what  we  may 
without  extravagance  name  a  philosophy  of  history  and 
of  religion.  The  similarities  of  the  Hebrew  narratives  of 
creation  to  the  Chaldaean  mythologies,  with  their  days  and 
stages  of  creation,  the  chaos  and  the  void  which  preceded  it, 
the  division  of  the  waters,  of  the  darkness  and  the  light, 
with  the  order  in  which  the  successive  organisms  appear,  the 
coming  of  man  and  the  dawn  of  the  Sabbath,  are  too  well 
known  to  call  for  either  exposition  or  remark  ;  but  the  genius 
of  Israel  contributes  the  idea  which  turns  the  mythical  into 
a  rational  process,  and  which  entitles  his  race  to  the  praise 
Aristotle  accorded  to  Anaxagoras  :  he  walks  amid  the 
ancient  peoples  like  a  sober  man  among  drunkards.  We 
start  with  a  beginning  in  which  God  is  ;  He  is  the  only 
uncaused  Being ;  the  vision  that  would  pierce  the  eternal  past 
sees  Him  alone,  and  beside  Him  stands  no  second  ;  and  His 
creative  methods  are  those  of  the  thinker  rather  than  of  the 
mechanic  or  artificer,  and  are  as  remote  as  possible  from 
the  monstrosities  of  the  mythical  cosmogonies,  whether 
Babylonian  or  Greek.  He  speaks,  and  His  language  is 
nature  ;  He  commands,  and  the  personalized  forces  obey  His 
word.  His  spirit  moves  upon  the  face  of  the  waters  ;  He 
breathes  into  man  the  breath  of  life.  And  His  relation  to 
the  creature  is  no  less  remarkable.  Since  man  is  His  breath, 
he  is  His  kin,  with  a  dependent  being,  yet  with  an  independ- 
ence of  will  which  fits  him  to  hold  fellowship  with  the  God 
who  made  him.  This  dignity,  which  he  can  keep  only  by 
obedience,  he  receives  but  to  lose  ;  for  on  the  very  morrow  of 
the  creation,  which,  as  it  left  God's  hand,  was  so  good,  evil 


HISTORY   OF   MAN   AND   RELIGION  247 

enters  because  man,  who  had  been  made  so  much  greater 
than  he  knew,  was  by  his  very  innocence  and  inexperience 
so  open  to  its  enticements. 

And  from  this  point  onwards  the  marvellous  segregative 
and  organizing  faculty  of  the  monotheistic  idea  shows  itself 
with  growing  distinctness.  The  material  it  deals  with  is  old, 
traditional  or  borrowed,  expressing  the  common  knowledge 
or  beliefs  of  Israel  and  the  cognate  peoples  ;  but  the  idea  so 
acts  as  to  build  it  into  a  new  structure  with  a  new  life.  Evil 
becomes  the  opponent  without  being  the  counterpart  of  God, 
and  works  against  Him  through  man,  in  whom  it  becomes 
impersonated,  while  He  works  against  it  in  man  and  in  the 
course  of  his  history.  And  here  we  meet  in  an  implicit 
and  more  profound  form  the  question  so  familiar  to  certain 
schools  of  Greek  thought  as  to  the  origin  of  religion.  Man 
has  been  so  made  that  religion  is  native  to  him  ;  but  he  has 
so  acted  that  a  multitude  of  religions  have  come  to  be.  The 
instinct  to  worship  springs  from  the  nature  he  owes  to  the 
Creator;  but  the  impulse  to  imagine  counterfeit  deities  comes 
from  the  evil  which  desires  a  God  lenient  to  sin.  Man 
cannot  escape  his  destiny,  he  must  be  religious  ;  yet  even 
in  being  what  he  must  he  indulges  his  self-will,  and  by 
multiplying  religions  grows  alien  from  the  truth.  But  man's 
misbehaviour  does  not  relieve  the  Creator  from  responsibility 
for  His  handiwork  ;  nay,  it  has  rather  increased  it,  and  so 
sin  is  met  by  punishment.  The  guilty  race  perishes  in  the 
waters  of  the  flood  ;  but,  as  if  to  show  that  destruction  in  no 
cure,  the  saved  family,  the  moment  it  touches  the  earth,  again 
betakes  itself  to  sinning.  Since  the  severest  and  most  exem- 
plary penalties,  so  far  from  acting  as  deterrents,  seem  only  to 
encourage  evil  to  return  as  an  unvanquished  and  mocking 
power,  discipline  is  tried  instead.  If  men  will  not  retain 
God  in  their  knowledge,  He  will  neither  accept  their  depraved 
ignorance  nor  abandon  them  to  it.  And  so  a  people  is 
chosen,  and  by  special  methods  trained  as  the  vehicle  of  His 


248  JEHOVAH   TRANSCENDS   ISRAEL 

truth,  that  in  them  "all  the  nations  of  the  earth  may  be 
blessed."  In  the  literature  this  universalism  within  the 
election  is  never  lost  sight  of;  the  people  are  not  allowed 
to  think  themselves  an  end,  God  is  not  restricted  to  their 
borders,  but  in  the  Law  a  hedge  is  set  round  them  that  His 
name  may  be  preserved  for  all  mankind.  The  forms  used  to 
express  this  idea  are  as  graphic  as  they  are  naive.  The  man 
who  appears  as  priest  of  the  Most  High  God,  blessing  the 
father  of  the  faithful  and  receiving  tithes  of  him,  does  not 
belong  to  the  selected  family.1  The  forsaken  bondwoman 
and  her  son  are  seen  and  specially  cared  for  in  the  desert  by 
the  God  of  Abraham,  who  thus  knows  Ishmael  as  well  as 
Isaac.2  The  "  perfect  man,  who  fears  God  and  eschews  evil," 
dwells  not  in  Judaea,  but  in  the  land  of  Uz.3  The  anointed 
minister  of  His  will  is  a  heathen  king,  a  Persian.4  Out  of  the 
East  comes  a  queen  to  admire  the  wisdom  of  Solomon.5  In 
one  prophetic  vision  all  nations  are  seen  bowing  down  to 
serve  Him  ;6  in  another  all  empires,  even  those  most  violently 
opposed  to  His  kingdom,  are  made  to  be  the  ministers  of  His 
will.7  And  these  universal  elements  persist  in  the  face  of  the 
rigorous  tribal  consciousness  which  ever  tended  to  conceive 
God  as  Israel's  rather  than  Israel  as  God's. 

3.  But  still  more  instructive  than  the  thought  which  applies 
the  monotheistic  idea  to  man  and  history  is  its  action  within 
the  religion.  Here  there  is  a  twofold  movement,  one  which 
is  proper  to  the  idea  itself,  its  immanent  growth  or  personal 
history  ;  and  one  which  belongs  to  the  worship  and  institu- 
tions in  which  the  collective  consciousness  laboured  to 
incorporate  and  realize  it. 

(a)  The  history  of  the  idea  shows  its  progressive  ameliora- 
tion and  expansion,  the  coincident  growth  of  higher  moral 

1  Gen.  xiv.  18-20  ;  cf.  Ps.  ex.  4  ;  Heb.  v.  6,  to  ;  vii.  i-io. 

2  Gen.  xvi.  10-13  ;  xxi.  12-20.  a  Job  i.  I. 

4  Isa.  xliv.  28  ;  xlv.  I.  6  I  Kings  x.  i-io. 

6  Isa.  lix.-lxi.,  Ixv.  *   Dan.  vii. 


BECOMES   ETHICAL  IN   CHARACTER         249 

qualities,  and  a  wider  and  more  sovereign  universalism.  At 
first  strength  or  power  and  God  are  nearly  equivalents. 
His  names  speak  of  might,  of  a  force  that  can  be  neither 
exhausted  nor  resisted  ;  and  while  He  is  so  conceived  He 
is  but  the  strongest — and  therefore  the  most  majestic  and 
awful — of  the  gods,  who  has  selected  a  people  for  Himself. 
Since  He  has  chosen  Israel  He  cannot  brook  a  rival  ;  He  is 
a  jealous  God,  towards  the  faithful  pitiful  and  slow  to  anger, 
but  terrible  to  the  faithless.  Yet  even  in  early  times  His 
moral  quality  appears  ;  at  the  heart  of  the  Mosaic  legislation 
there  stands  a  moral  idea  or  law  which  governs  His  relations 
to  His  people  and  His  people's  to  Him.  These  relations  are 
conditional  and  not  absolute  ;  God  can  be  theirs,  and  they 
can  be  His  only  as  they  believe  and  obey,  and  their  obedi- 
ence is  to  be  personal  and  ethical,  not  simply  collective  and 
ceremonial.  This  was  a  wonderful  innovation  in  religion,  a 
thing  so  new  and  so  strange  that  its  significance  and  its 
possibilities  were  by  no  means  obvious  to  those  who  saw  it 
made.  But  this  was  only  the  beginning  of  change  ;  the 
longer  the  people  knew  God  and  the  better  they  served,  the 
more  they  loved  and  revered  Him.  He  had  called  them  out 
of  Egypt,  founded  their  state,  which  stood  in  His  strength 
rather  than  in  its  o\vn.  On  this  act  He  would  not  go  back, 
for  was  He  not  faithful,  bound  by  His  acts,  bound  by  His 
promises,  though  acts  and  promises  alike  implied  that  His 
people  should  be  as  faithful  as  He?  But  this  strong  and 
sovereign  and  faithful  God  was  also  tender  and  compas- 
sionate :  had  He  not  married  Himself  to  Israel,  and  would 
He  not  be  true  to  His  vows  even  when  Israel  erred,  and  be 
patient,  forbearing,  forgiving,  even  as  a  noble  husband  to  a 
faithless  wife?  But  there  was  a  nearer  and  a  higher  thought: 
the  Maker  was  the  Father  ;  and  though  his  child  might  rebel, 
yet  would  He  not  forget  the  fruit  of  His  loins.  And  if  He 
was  a  God  of  this  order,  did  He  not  dwell  apart  from  all 
gods,  and  from  all  frail  and  feeble  creatures,  holy  in  nature 


250  MAN   HOLY   AS  GOD  IS   HOLY 

and  in  name  ?  But  the  more  moral  He  was  conceived  to  be, 
the  more  moral  man  had  to  become  in  order  to  please  Him. 
It  was  not  enough  that  He  should  be  honoured  by  fasts  and 
festivals,  by  sacrifices  and  oblations,  as  were  the  gods  of  the 
Gentiles.  What  He  required  of  man  was  justice,  mercy, 
humility,  purity  of  hands  and  heart ;  the  only  service  fit  for  a 
holy  God  was  the  service  of  holy  men.  Hence  the  worship 
of  the  Good  by  the  good  was  the  only  worship  He  could 
approve.  And  at  this  point  the  evolution  of  the  idea  intro- 
duced into  the  religion  a  twofold  change ;  first,  Jehovah 
ceased  to  be  regarded  by  the  great  teachers  as  the  God  of 
one  people,  bound  to  them  by  peculiar  ties  of  word  and  deed, 
and  He  came  to  be  conceived  as  the  God  of  the  pious  man 
everywhere,  sought  and  worshipped  by  him,  loving  the  search 
and  approving  the  worship  ;  and,  secondly,  He  was  to  be 
recognised  in  a  hitherto  unknown  degree  as  the  God  of  the 
individual,  the  hearer  of  his  prayer,  the  comforter  of  his  life, 
the  object  of  his  faith,  and  the  hope  of  his  salvation.  And 
these  were  not  opposed,  but  concordant  tendencies,  for  what 
is  most  universal  must  be  open  to  every  individual,  and  what 
every  person  may  appropriate  must  be  accessible  to  all.  The 
books  which  express  these  ideas  are  the  sublimest,  not  only 
in  Hebrew,  but  in  all  sacred  literature.  The  great  prophets 
of  the  captivity  and  the  return,  especially  Jeremiah  and  the 
later  Isaiah,  express  the  monotheistic  as  a  collective  yet 
ethical  faith,  opening  its  arms  to  all  the  reverent,  blessing  all 
the  obedient.  And  the  Book  of  Psalms  is  the  voice  of  the 
monotheistic  faith  as  a  personal  religion,  seeking  with  a 
passion  that  will  not  be  denied  the  God  who  is  the  light  and 
life  of  the  soul.  It  needs  Him  in  its  joy  and  in  its  sorrow, 
in  the  face  of  death  and  in  the  midst  of  strife,  when  it  goes 
to  the  house  of  God  in  goodly  company,  and  when  it  pines 
alone,  forsaken  of  all  the  men  it  trusted  ;  when  it  dwells  in 
the  besieged  city  or  watches  on  the  lone  plain  the  flocks  by 
night,  when  it  is  uplifted  by  being  cast  down  into  the  depth 


THE   TRIBAL   INSTINCT   IN  WORSHIP         251 

or  humbled  by  being  allowed  to  go  its  own  way  to  disaster 
and  shame;  but,  above  all,  it  needs  Him  when  it  has  sinned 
against  Him,  and  can  only  ask  that  He  would,  according  to 
the  multitude  of  His  tender  mercies,  blot  out  its  transgres- 
sions. The  Psalter  is  a  great  Book  of  Religion;  it  shows  that 
devotion  is  most  sublime  when  it  is  most  personal,  that  the 
man  who  has  never  stood  with  his  soul  uncovered  before 
God  has  never  worshipped,  or  tasted  the  ecstasy  of  one  who, 
though  a  mortal,  has  lost  all  sense  of  mortality  by  feeling 
round  him  the  everlasting  arms.  The  literature  that  can 
plant  so  majestic  a  life  in  the  soul  may  well  be  known  as 
the  sacred  Book  of  Monotheism. 

(/3)  When  we  turn  from  the  idea  to  the  institutions,  or  the 
worship  by  which  God  was  to  be  approached,  and  in  which 
He  was  to  be  served,  we  come  upon  a  history  with  a  very 
different  moral.  Here  we  find  the  tribal  consciousness  at 
work,  seeking  to  restrict  God  to  Israel,  to  fix  the  terms  on 
which  the  Gentile  should  be  allowed  to  participate  in  His 
grace.  It  is  a  sad  story,  all  the  sadder  because  through  so 
many  ages-  the  Christian  read  the  Jew's  legislation  with  the 
Jew's  eyes  and  in  his  sense.  But  now  that  our  eyes  are 
opened  we  can  see,  as  Stephen  and  as  Paul  saw,  the  strenuous 
labour  of  the  Jew,  running  through  many  centuries,  to  limit 
the  Holy  One  to  his  tribe.  The  institutions,  which  were  the 
organism  of  worship,  if  not  in  intention  yet  in  fact  and  in 
effect,  contradicted  and  cancelled  the  monotheism  which 
was  the  intellectual  and  moral  soul  of  the  religion.  To  say 
this  is  not  to  undervalue  the  ethical  ideas  that  under- 
lie the  ritual.  The  people  elected  to  serve  God  must  be 
worth}-  of  the  God  they  serve.  "  Be  ye  holy,  for  I  am 
hol\',"  is  the  maxim  on  which  their  worship  is  founded.  The 
people  who  are  God's  priests  to  mankind  must  be  clothed 
in  the  beautiful  garments  of  the  priesthood.  The  idea  is 
excellent,  provided  the  symbolical  sense  be  not  forgotten  ; 
but  here  as  everywhere  the  tribal  instinct  translated  the 


252  THE   SOLE   SOVEREIGN   GOD 

symbols  into  substance.  And  as  the  ethical  was  lost  in  the 
ceremonial,  the  universal  died  in  the  particular.  The  more 
sharply  the  national  consciousness  expressed  itself  in  national 
institutions,  the  more  emphatically  were  tribal  limitations 
placed  upon  the  religion.  The  more  they  made  the  law  they 
enacted  the  law  of  God,  the  less  could  they  allow  peoples 
who  had  not  the  law  any  share  in  their  God. ,  By  building 
the  temple  they  localized  the  worship  of  Him  who  knew  no 
place  ;  by  drawing  tighter  the  terms  of  the  covenant,  they 
confined  to  themselves  the  Father  who  loved  every  people  ; 
by  forming  an  hereditary  priesthood  they  attached  His  ser- 
vice to  one  family  ;  by  elaborating  their  ceremonies,  they 
shut  religion  within  the  ritual  which  they  alone  possessed, 
though  even  here  the  ethical  sovereignty  which  could  not  be 
denied  to  Jehovah  made  Him  broader  than  their  law.  The 
writer  of  most  significance  here  is  Ezekiel,  who  is  priest  as 
well  as  prophet,  and  who  stands  between  the  Deuteronomic 
legislation  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Levitical  on  the  other. 
Jehovah  is  to  him  pre-eminently  the  God  of  Israel  and  they 
are  his  people.1  He  makes  with  them  an  everlasting  cove- 
nant, sets  His  temple  in  their  midst,  and  dwells  in  their  land.2 
The  priests,  like  himself  sons  of  Zadok,  are  the  ministers 
who  enter  the  sanctuary  and  approach  God  for  the  people  ; 3 
and  their  independence  is  to  be  secured  by  a  gift  of  land 
which  is  to  be  "  holy,"  the  portion  of  the  priests,  the  ministers 
of  the  sanctuary  4  whose  revenues  are  thus  assured  that  they 
themselves,  with  their  offices  and  rites,  may  be  protected  from 
princes  and  people.  Ritual  offences  are  grievous  sins ;  and 
though  he  holds  the  individual  responsible,  yet  the  real  unit 
before  God  is  the  nation,  and  the  only  goodness  the  nation 
can  know  or  manifest  is  conformity  to  some  external  law. 
Hence  Ezekiel  represented  the  tendency  that  would  restrict 
God  to  a  particular  place  or  definite  temple,  His  ministry  to 
a  specific  priesthood,  His  worship  to  special  forms,  and  His 
1  \\xiv.  30.  2  xxxvii.  26-28.  s  xliv.  15,  16.  *\lv.  3-8. 


AND   HIS   PECULIAR   PEOPLE  253 

servants  to  a  peculiar  people.  The  higher  and  more  spiritual 
prophets  struggled  indeed  to  emancipate  the  religion  from 
this  tribal  particularism,  but  they  struggled  in  vain.  They 
sa\v  the  impure  idolatries  which  corrupted  the  nations  ;  they 
described  with  passion  and  splendid  irony  the  idol  which  the 
smith  made  and  the  carpenter  fastened  in  his  place,  and  the 
people  bowed  down  before  and  called  upon  as  their  god  ; 
and  over  against  it  they  placed  the  Eternal,  the  unmade 
Maker,  who  formed  the  light,  who  formed  the  darkness,  who 
overthrew  kings  and  set  up  kingdoms,  who  fainted  not  and 
never  was  weary,  and  they  bade  all  states  to  come  and 
worship  Him.  But  their  ideal  remained  a  prophetic  vision  ; 
it  never  became  a  reality.  The  real  that  was  they  hated  only 
less  than  the  heathen  worships,  if  indeed  they  hated  it  less. 
For  in  the  region  of  realized  things  the  fanaticism  of  the 
tribe  was  mightier  than  the  inspiration  of  the  prophet.  It  is 
one  of  the  supreme  ironies  of  history  that  the  last  century 
in  which  the  monotheistic  people  existed  as  a  nation  was 
also  the  period  of  their  most  frenzied  particularism.  In  the 
heated  imagination  of  the  tribe  the  vessel  became  more 
infinitely  precious  than  the  treasure  it  carried. 

§  V.    Judaism  at  Home  and  in  tlie  Dispersion 

I.  But  what  Israel  at  home  failed  to  do,  the  Israel  of  the 
dispersion  more  nearly  accomplished.  The  men  who  escaped 
in  some  measure  from  the  tribal  institutions  escaped  also  in 
the  same  degree  from  the  tribal  consciousness  ;  and  so  could 
look  at  religion  in  the  light  of  their  universal  theism  rather 
than  through  the  shadows  cast  by  local  cults  and  customs. 
Of  the  kingdoms  that  sprang  from  the  empire  of  Alexander, 
two  had  dealings  with  Israel  :  the  Syrian  oppressed  him  at 
home,  the  Egyptian  protected  him  abroad.  The  Seleucid 
kings  so  tyrannized  over  the  elect  people,  so  insulted  their 
faith  and  worship,  as  to  provoke  the  Maccaba^an  revolt  ;  and 


254    HOW  GREEK  LIFE  AND  THOUGHT 

in  the  war  for  freedom  religion  became  the  symbol  of  the 
patriot  and  the  seal  of  civil  independence.  As  a  consequence 
the  tribal  and  the  religious  consciousness  became  more 

o 

deeply  interfused,  the  religious  gave  to  the  tribal  its  exalta- 
tion and  its  sanction ;  while  the  tribal  denned,  narrowed,  and 
embittered  the  religious.  But  the  Ptolemies,  by  befriending 
the  Jews,  who  had  by  settling  in  their  opulent  cities  increased 
their  wealth  and  enhanced  their  importance,  evoked  a  temper 
quick  to  admire  the  different  and  to  assimilate  the  foreign. 
And  the  amelioration  was  most  marked  in  the  region  of  faith, 
for  the  immigrants  soon  discovered  that  even  as  regards 
religion  the  Gentiles  could  teach  the  Jews  as  well  as  learn 
from  them.  The  very  attempt  to  interpret  their  religion 
for  the  foreigner,  interpreted  it  into  a  new  and  larger  faith 
for  themselves.  The  Scriptures  were  translated  out  of  the 
Hebrew  into  the  Greek  tongue,  and  so  became  international 
or  even  cosmopolitan,  a  book  for  Gentiles  as  well  as  Jews. 
Then  translation  did  not  leave  the  matter  unchanged  ;  sacred 
history  and  discourse,  read  in  the  medium  of  a  literary  and 
philosophical  language,  not  only  lost  much  of  their  old 
simplicity  and  many  of  their  old  associations,  but  also  gained 
with  their  new  forms  new  associations  and  a  new  sense.  The 
Jew  who  knew  Greek  but  did  not  know  Hebrew  read  his 
Scriptures  more  a?  a  Hellenist  than  as  a  Rabbi  ;  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  great  synagogue  fell  from  him,  and  the  canons, 
critical  and  exegetical,  of  the  Alexandrian  schools  took  their 
place.  With  the  knowledge  of  Greek  came  also  the  know- 
ledge of  another  order  of  religious  thought.  To  hear  Moses 
and  Plato,  Jeremiah  and  Zeno,  Isaiah  and  Euripides  speak 
in  the  same  tongue  was  rather  to  realize  their  kinship  than  to 
feel  their  difference.  And  there  began  to  dawn  upon  the 
students  of  Alexandria  what  had  been  hidden  from  the 
patriots  of  Judaea,  that  the  vision  of  Deity  had  been  known  to 
Greece  as  well  as  to  Israel.  The  Attic  sage  and  the  Hebrew 
seer  were  of  one  spirit,  fulfilled  like  functions,  were  inspired 


MADE   HEBRAISM  HELLENISTIC  255 

and  instructed  by  the  same  God.  The  method  of  allegorical 
interpretation  which  the  Greek  had  used  to  reduce  his 
mythology  to  literary  decency  and  philosophical  wisdom,  the 
Jew  used  to  turn  his  sacred  history  into  a  theology  ;  the 
creation,  Eden,  the  fall,  our  first  parents,  the  patriarchs  and 
their  acts,  were  all  subjected  to  the  metamorphic  process 
which  had  expelled  violence  from  Homer  and  reduced  to 
respectability  the  most  lascivious  of  the  gods.  But  the 
theistic  idea  suffered  the  most  significant  modification.  The 
Greek  Logos  was  allowed  to  break  into  the  stern  solitude  of 
the  Hebrew  Deity.  It  stood  between  Him  and  the  world, 
separated  Him  from  its  evil  and  grossness,  and  relieved  it 
from  the  oppressive  weight  of  His  almighty  hand.  The 
Logos  was  the  intelligible  which  He  had  thought  into  being  ; 
but  it  was  also  the  architect  who  had  realized  the  actual. 
The  All-holy  did  not  stand  face  to  face  with  the  material  and 
sensuous,  but  He  saw  them,  if  He  could  be  said  to  see  them 
at  all,  through  the  medium  of  His  beloved  Word.  And  this 
mediated  relation  allowed  a  kindlier  attitude  to  man  and  his 
religions.  They  were  studied  not  through  the  divisive  pro- 
perties of  law  and  custom,  but  through  the  affinities  of 
imagination  and  thought.  The  speech  which  had  interpreted 
the  religion  made  the  religion  more  just  to  all  who  had  used 
the  speech.  Greece  as  well  as  Juchea  had  known  the  true 
God  ;  in  the  one  as  certainly  as  in  the  other  the  Logos  had 
been  active  ;  men  through  contemplation  of  His  beauty  had 
learned  to  obey  His  will.  And  so  a  conclusion  was  readied 
which  we  may  thus  express  :  Where  the  thought  is  the  same 
the  religions  may  be  distinct,  but  cannot  be  different,  for  the 
God  who  made  the  intelligible  made  all  intellects  akin  to 
each  other  and  to  Him  ;  and  it  is  through  the  knowledge  of 
the  truth  that  He  is  most  truly  known,  and  in  its  contem- 
plation that  He  is  most  purely  worshipped. 

What  Judaism   represents,  then,  is  the  issue  of  the   conflict 
between   the   universal    idea  and   the  local  cult  as   embodied 


256      JUDAISM   AS   VICTORY   OF   THE   CULT 

in  the  localized  race.  Where  the  cult  had  behind  it  the 
traditions,  the  associations,  and  the  patriotism  of  the  home  it 
proved  stronger  than  the  idea,  imposing  upon  God,  who  was 
theoretically  one  and  alone  and  supreme,  the  limitations  of  a 
tribal  worship  ;  but  where  the  idea  was  emancipated  from 
those  domestic  and  ancestral  associations,  it  tended  to  prove 
itself  stronger  than  the  cult  The  triumph  of  the  cult  meant 
the  nationalization  of  the  religion,  which  would  then  be  an 
abortive  or  unrealized  monotheism  ;  but  the  triumph  of  the 
idea  meant  the  universalization  of  the  religion,  which  could 
only  become  an  absolute  monotheism  by  the  worship  being 
loosed  from  the  bonds  of  the  tribe  and  realized  in  humaner 
forms.  And  the  form  which  the  process  assumed  in  the  dis- 
persion was  the  modification  of  the  religion  into  a  system  of 
philosophy,  whose  notes  were  eclecticism  in  thought  and  syn- 
cretism in  worship.  But  the  necessity  of  the  situation  was  the 
consistency  of  idea  and  form,  the  homogeneity  of  the  worship, 
the  worshipper,  and  the  God.  And  this  homogeneity  no 
syncretism  has  ever  realized.  Hence  came  a  conflict  which 
was  not  incidental,  but  essential ;  for  it  grew  out  of  the  imperi- 
ous demand  of  the  only  thoroughly  universal  idea  which  had 
risen  in  the  history  of  religion  for  a  medium  which  should  do 
justice  to  its  universalism.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  this 
could  not  be  found  in  the  institutions  which  were  the  symbols 
of  national  existence,  as  they  were  the  creations  of  the  tribal 
or  national  consciousness.  To  speak  of  the  Jewish  law  and 
worship  in  these  terms  is  to  characterize,  but  not  to  depre- 
ciate, them.  The  universal  idea  could  come  into  the  thought 
and  faith  of  humanity  only  through  special  persons,  and  such 
persons  could  be  born  and  nursed  only  by  a  special  people. 
The  fitness  of  Israel  to  be  the  foster  parent  of  such  an  idea 
does  riot  lie  open  to  question  ;  it  is  writ  large  on  the  whole 
face  of  his  history  and  of  man's.  He  lived  for  his  idea  ;  his 
loyalty  to  it  resisted  all  the  absorbent  forces  of  the  ancient 
empires,  and  though  the  mightiest  empire  of  them  all  broke 


YET   AS   VEHICLE    OF   THE    IDEA         257 

up  his  state  and  threw  his  homeless  members  broadcast  upon 
the  world,  yet  the  dispersed  units  have  defied  the  assimilative 
energy  of  all  modern  peoples.  And  we  may  add  that  that 
energy  has  been  inspired  by  every  passion — hate,  fear,  greed, 
revenge,  disdain,  indifference,  toleration,  love  of  freedom  in 
the  abstract  rather  than  of  concrete  men — by  everything,  in- 
deed, save  the  only  thing  that  could  have  helped  and  healed, 
viz.,  sympathy  and  appreciation.  Such  a  people  was  the  very 
medium  needed  for  the  birth  and  breeding,  the  nurture  and 
development  of  an  idea  which  man  so  required,  and  yet  was 
so  averse  to  receive ;  but  the  idea  which  could  be  begotten 
and  nursed  only  by  such  a  people  could  not  continue  their 
perennial  possession.  And  the  pathos  of  Israel's  position 
lies  in  their  invincible  devotion  to  the  national  form  of  a 
belief  which,  in  order  that  it  might  realize  itself  and  become 
man's,  required  to  lose  all  trace  of  its  national  origin  and 
tribal  history  and  live  in  a  medium  as  universal  as  its  nature 
and  function.  Whether  such  a  medium  has  been  found  is 
a  question  which  has  yet  to  be  discussed. 


P.C.R.  17 


CHAPTER  VIII 

FOUNDED   RELIGIONS  AND  THEIR  FOUNDERS 

§   I.    Religions,  Spontaneous  and  Founded 

I.  r  I  ^HE  question  as  to  the  part  played  by  Jesus  Christ  in 
JL  the  creation  of  the  Christian  religion  is  particular 
or  specific  ;  but  it  involves  principles  and  problems  which 
belong  to  the  philosophy  of  religion  and  to  its  comparative 
history.  Founded  religions  constitute  a  class  or  order  by 
themselves  ;  their  qualities  can  be  explained  only  through 
the  relations  between  them  and  their  founders,  and  the  con- 
ditions out  of  which  they  both  grew.  The  founded  may  also 
be  described  as  instituted  or  personal  religions,  in  distinction 
from  those  which,  as  without  any  single  or  conscious  creator, 
may  be  classified  as  natural,  spontaneous,  or  impersonal. 
The  spontaneous  are  products  of  the  common  or  collective 
reason,  whose  units  work,  though  without  defined  purpose, 
vet  instinctively  and  concurrently,  combined  in  action  be- 
cause conditioned  throughout  by  time  and  place  ;  but  the 
instituted  run  back  into  certain  historical  personalities,  and 
are,  if  not  their  immediate  and  designed  creations,  yet  the 
clear  outcomes  of  personal  reasons  and  conscious  wills.  The 
impersonal  religions  are  not  the  work  of  any  one  man  or  any 
special  body  of  men,  disciples  or  apostles,  but  rather  of  our 
common  nature  ;  and  they  have  come  to  be  by  a  process  as 
natural  and  as  much  regulated  by  law  as  that  which  produced 
language,  custom,  society,  and  the  State.  But  the  founded 
or  personal  religions  have  their  source  or  spring,  if  not 
their  sufficient  reason,  in  some  particular  man  and  are  in- 


APOTHEOSES    OF    NATURE   AND   SPIRIT    259 

separably  connected  with  certain  specific  beliefs  as  to  his  per- 
son, office,  or  work.  The  one  class  as  collective  live  in,  for,  and 
through  the  tribe  or  people,  grow  with  them,  and  form  an  inte- 
gral part  of  the  national  order ;  but  the  other  class  as  personal 
are  rooted  in  the  active  reason,  appeal  to  it,  live  in  it,  and 
grow  with  it.  Spontaneous  religions  may  be  termed  apothe- 
oses of  nature,  or  the  interpretation  of  spirit  and  the  expres- 
sion of  its  ideas  in  sensuous  forms  ;  but  instituted  religions 
may  be  described  as  apotheoses  of  personality,  or  the  inter- 
pretation of  man  and  the  expression  of  his  ideas  in  the  terms 
of  mind  or  spirit.  As  a  first  consequence  the  spontaneous 
religions  tend  to  be  in  character  more  consuetudinary  than 
ethical,  more  legal  than  rational,  affairs  of  the  community 
rather  than  of  individuals  or  societies  within  it  ;  but  the 
instituted,  as  more  nearly  allied  to  spirit  than  to  nature,  tend 
as  regards  matter  to  emphasize  the  ideal,  and  as  respects  form 
to  think  more  of  mind  and  character  than  of  observance  and 
custom.  As  a  second  consequence  the  spontaneous  religions 
are  not  capable  of  detachment  from  the  nation  or  tribe  ;  while 
the  instituted  addressing  themselves  to  the  individual,  working 
from  within  outward,  or  using  the  outward  only  to  get  within, 
constitute  societies  out  of  the  likeminded,  and  organize  them 
according  to  some  dominant  principle.  The  distinction,  then, 
seems  to  be  here  coincident  with  that  between  national  and 
universal  or  missionary  religions  ;  but  it  really  carries  us  a 
step  farther,  for  it  enables  us  to  trace  the  most  distinctive 
attributes  of  the  missionary  religions  to  their  sources  or  roots. 
Man  is  more  universal  than  nature  ;  the  system  which  has 
most  humanity  in  it  speaks  to  man  most  intimately  and  is 
most  capable  of  satisfying  him  ;  while  the  higher  the  moral 
character  of  him  who  institutes  the  religion,  or  causes  it  to 
be  instituted,  the  finer  will  be  its  ethical  qualities  and  the 
in; >re  humane  its  spirit. 

2.    Hut  though  the  spontaneous  and  the  founded   religions 
form  distinct  classes,  they  yet  stand  in  historical  relations  ;md 


260  THE    PERSONAL   CONTINUOUS 

appear  in  a  determined  order.  Three  things  are  indeed  ne- 
cessary to  the  creation  of  a  personal  religion  :  (i.)  an  historical 
background  or  a  fit  ancestry  ;  (ii.)  a  creative  religious  genius  ; 
and  (iii.)  a  congenial  society  or  environment  upon  and  within 
which  the  genius  may  operate. 

i.  The  instituted  religion  needs  a  substructure  on  which 
to  build.  As  a  matter  of  fact  no  religion  capable  of  being  so 
described  is  primitive  or,  in  the  strict  sense,  a  new  or  a  pure 
creation.  We  have  here,  as  elsewhere,  first  that  which  is 
natural,  and  afterwards  that  which  is  spiritual.  If  the  imper- 
sonal did  not  already  exist,  the  personal  could  not  even  begin 
to  be  ;  the  one  is  the  parent  whose  being  the  other  as  child 
presupposes  and  authenticates.  To  be  the  founder  of  a  reli- 
gion is  not  to  be  its  inventor — for  the  invented  would  be 
artificial,  manufactured,  arbitrary  and  therefore  local  and 
ephemeral  ;  but  it  is  to  be  the  cause  or  occasion  which  de- 
velopes  a  new  species  out  of  an  old.  Every  founded  religion 
implies  therefore  some  ancient  historical  religion  which  it  has 
transformed,  on  which  it  has  built,  and  without  which  it  would 
not  have  been  possible  ;  but  not  every  spontaneous  religion  is 
capable  of  becoming  the  foundation  or  parent  of  a  personal 
religion.  Growth  does  not  always  mean  production,  or  de- 
velopment the  creation  of  new  forms  ;  for  many  religions 
have  lived  thousands  of  years  and  undergone  infinite  modifi- 
cations without  changing  their  nature  or  losing  their  imper- 
sonal character.  Thus  Hinduism  and  the  Vedic  religion  are 
so  different  that  they  may  be  said  to  have  hardly  a  single 
essential  feature  in  common  ;  their  pantheons,  priesthoods, 
worships,  sacrifices,  ceremonies  ;  their  social  systems,  ideals  of 
life,  personal  and  collective,  as  well  as  their  ideas  of  death 
and  the  future,  all  differ,  often  radically  and  even  diametri- 
cally. Yet  if  anything  in  history  be  certain,  it  is  that  Hinduism, 
with  all  it  stands  for,  has  descended  without  any  break  of 
continuity,  though  with  cumulative  accretions  and  ever  in- 
creasing variations  from  the  faith  held  and  the  order  observed 


WITH    THE    IMPERSONAL    RELIGIONS      261 

by  the  Veclic  men.  On  the  other  hand,  Hebraism  and  Chris- 
tianity are  much  more  alike  than  the  two  Indian  systems  and 
have  an  historical  connexion  even  more  intimate  and  organic. 
In  their  ideas  of  God,  His  character  and  His  law,  of  man 
and  his  duty,  of  the  prophet  and  his  word,  of  life  and  its 
issues,  in  almost  all  those  things  in  which  the  modern  differs 
from  the  ancient  Hindu,  they  fundamentally  agree  ;  yet  they 
constitute  not  one  religion  but  two,  each  incapable  of  fusion 
with  the  other,  dissimilar  in  character  and  independent  in 
bjing.  The  Jewish  had  no  room  for  the  Christian  religion, 
the  Christian  has  no  room  for  the  Jewish  ;  and  though  they 
use  the  same  name  for  God,  speak  of  Him  in  identical  terms, 
praise  Him  in  the  same  Psalms,  with  equal  reverence  regard 
the  same  book  as  His  inspired  word,  and  alike  enforce  the 
need  of  clean  hands  and  pure  hearts  in  the  men  who  would 
worship  Him,  yet  one  fact  or  belief  so  determines  their  respec- 
tive qualities  and  relations  that  neither  can  be  merged  in  the 
other.  Hebraism  is  Christianity  and  Christianity  is  Hebraism 
in  every  respect  save  this  one,  the  interpreted  Person  of  Jesus 
Christ  ;  what  divides  them  is  not  the  historical  Jesus,  the 
Man  who  was  a  son  of  Israel  and  lived  in  time,  but  the  theo- 
logical Christ,  the  Person  who  has  been  construed  into  the 
Son  of  God,  whose  Deity  is  equal  to  the  Father's.  Without 
this  we  should  have  had  no  Christian  religion,  but  only  a 
Jewish  sect  the  more  ;  with  this  we  have  a  Jewish  sect  the 
less,  but  the  largest  and  most  missionary  of  religions.  Yet 
though  this  belief  more  than  any  other  thing  divides  and  dis- 
tinguishes the  religions,  the  younger  owes  its  peculiar  form 
and  quality  to  the  elder.  For  it  is  because  the  antecedent 
religion  was  so  essentially  a  religion  of  the  Divine  unity  that 
the  passion  for  it  was  so  native  to  its  successor  that  it  could 
never  be  tempted  to  think  of  Deity  as  other  than  one  ;  and  it 
is  because  the  successor  not  only  had  a  new  teacher  but  was 
a  peculiar  belief  concerning  Him  that  it  became  a  new  re- 
ligion essentially  distinct  from  the  old.  The  revolutionary 


262     THE    DEITY   AND   THE    INCARNATION 

and  creative  power  did  not  lie  so  much  in  the  person  as  in 
the  belief ;  and  what  gave  the  belief  its  power  was  that,  so  far 
from  dissolving  the  monistic  and  exclusive  quality  of  the 
theistic  idea  which  it  inherited  and  after  which  it  was  framed, 
it  only  helped  the  more  to  intensify  and  define  it.  And 
here  we  may  see  why  the  belief  is  so  offensive  to  the  Jew  and 
so  unintelligible  to  the  Hindu.  The  Jew  cannot  conceive  how 
his  God  could  become  incarnate  in  any  man ;  the  Hindu 
cannot  conceive  how  any  one  man  should  be  the  sole  and 
exclusive  incarnation  of  God.  He  thinks  of  deity  as  incarnate 
in  every  man  and  in  all  forms  of  life  ;  in  so  thinking  he 
makes  incarnation  in  the  Christian  sense  impossible,  for  by 
deifying  everything  he  undeifies  all.  The  only  possible  form 
a  revolt  from  Hinduism  can  assume  is  that  of  negation — a 
denial  of  the  idea  by  which  it  lives,  explains  man,  and  or- 
ganizes society.  Buddhism  was  this,  and  because  it  was  this, 
while  it  lived  in  India  long  enough  to  show  that  in  a  system 
that  knew  no  deity  there  could  be  no  permanent  or  real 
apotheosis  of  the  founder,  yet  its  inevitable  fate  was  to  perish 
by  being  absorbed  into  the  religion  it  had  repudiated.  But  an 
absolute  monotheism  is  a  principle  of  absolute  coherence  and 
individuation  ;  it  can  allow  no  deity  to  stand  alongside  its 
God  and  share  His  worship  and  dignity.  And  if  the  idea  of 
incarnation  ever  finds  a  foothold  in  connexion  with  such  a 
Deity  it  must,  unless  His  unity  and  personality  are  broken  up, 
involve  a  unity  and  be  expressed  in  a  personality  as  absolute 
as  His  own.  Hence  the  unity  which  constituted  Hebraism 
was  continued  in  Christianity,  whose  Founder  became  as 
solitary  in  deity  and  as  pre-eminent  in  His  solitude,  as  the 
Jehovah  He  realized  rather  than  superseded. 

ii.  The  founder  must  be  an  historical  person  of  creative 
genius.  Unless  he  be  "  an  historical  person  "  there  can  be  no 
continuity  in  the  religion,  nothing  to  bind  it  to  the  past,  con- 
nect it  with  the  present,  or  transmit  it  to  the  future.  A 
system  which  is  without  antecedents  can  have  no  consequents, 


THE  FOUNDER  NO  MERE  REFORMER  263 

but  is  a  mere  isolated,  and  therefore  inexplicable  phenome- 
non. To  be  without  father  and  mother  is  to  be  also  without 
descendants,  a  being  man  can  neither  understand  nor  con- 
strue, neither  believe  nor  imitate,  neither  obey  nor  follow. 
The  historical  reality  of  the  founder  is  thus  a  condition  ante- 
cedent to  the  historical  being  of  the  religion  which  is  to  bear 
his  name.  "  Creative  genius,"  again,  is  a  term  denotive  of  the 
force  which  enabled  him  to  be  what  he  was  and  perform  what 
he  did.  It  means  more  than  intellectual,  ethical,  or  social 
eminence  ;  it  means  such  a  transcendence  of  local  conditions 
as  cannot  be  explained  by  the  completest  inheritance  of  the 
past,  a  personality  that  so  embodies  a  new  ideal  as  to  awaken 
in  man  the  imitative  passion  and  the  interpretative  imagina- 
tion. Thus  the  founder  must  here  be  distinguished  from  the 
reformer  ;  every  founder  may  be  a  reformer  of  religion,  but 
not  every  reformer  is  a  founder.  The  reformer  may  arise, 
preach  a  new  or  revive  an  old  doctrine,  call  to  a  higher  life 
and  institute  a  society  for  its  realization  ;  and  this  type  of 
man  has  been  known  to  every  historical  religion,  has  appeared 
in  some  an  innumerable  multitude  of  times,  though  he  has 
risen  only  to  create  a  new  sect  or  a  new  order  within  the  old. 
To  this  class  belong  Benedict,  Francis,  and  Dominic,  and 
their  great  and  saintly  kinsmen  in  all  the  historical  reli- 
gions. What  changes  the  reformer  into  the  founder  is  not  so 
much  his  own  act  as  his  people's,  the  creative  action  of  his 
personality  on  their  imagination  forcing  them  to  invest  him 
with  attributes  and  functions  supersessive  of  the  authority 
and  worship  of  the  ancient  gods.  No  teacher  simply  as  a 
teacher  ever  created  a  new  religion,  for  a  religion  is  made  not 
by  discussions  but  by  beliefs,  not  by  abstract  principles  but 
by  a  concrete  object  of  worship,  not  by  the  quickening  and 
cultivation  of  the  intellect  but  by  the  operation  of  an  authoritv 
which  commands  the  whole  man,  and  organizes  his  life  on  a 
more  spiritual  basis  and  according  to  a  higher  ideal.  It  is, 
then,  not  simply  in  what  the  founder  was  and  did,  but  in  what 


264      THE    HISTORICAL   AND   THE    IDEAL 

he  was  conceived  to  be,  that  the  forces  creative  of  a  new 
religion  lie  ;  but  even  though  his  historical  personality  be 
thus  transformed,  it  does  not  cease  to  be  operative ;  on  the 
contrary,  it  becomes,  by  being  idealized,  more  potent.  For  it 
is  made  the  interpretative  and  normative  term  of  the  highest 
religious  ideas  ;  the  universe,  its  source  and  meaning,  its 
course  and  end,  are  read  in  the  light  of  his  personality,  and 
God  is  interpreted  through  the  man. 

The  founder,  then,  has  a  twofold  value  for  the  religion,  an 
historical  and  an  ideal.  Without  the  historical  he  would  have 
no  connexion  with  humanity,  standing  outside  it  he  would  be 
unable  to  act  upon  it,  absolved  from  all  relations  he  would 
have  no  more  worth  than  belongs  to  a  dream  or  vision  of  the 
mind.  Without  the  ideal  he  would  have  no  transcendental 
significance,  no  meaning  for  the  mystery  of  the  universe, 
nothing  to  say  to  man  touching  the  ideas  by  which  he  lives. 
The  historical  character  of  the  founder  determines  the  ethical 
quality  of  the  faith  he  founds  ;  his  transcendental  signficance 
defines  its  higher  beliefs.  The  two  must  be  combined  before 
knowledge  of  him  can  constitute  a  religion. 

iii.  The  function  and  the  need  of  a  congenial  society  or 
medium  within  which  the  founder  may  live  and  operate  will 
now  be  apparent  Its  function  is  the  interpretation  of  his 
person,  the  practice  of  his  worship,  the  imitation  of  his  charac- 
ter, the  study  of  his  thought,  the  realization  of  his  ideals  ;  in 
a  word,  it  is  to  make  the  religion  called  by  his  name  a  reality. 
The  society  may  thus  be  denned  as,  on  the  one  hand,  a  con- 
tributory cause,  and,  on  the  other,  a  condition  necessary,  to 
the  being  of  the  religion.  As  the  founder  embodies  for  it 
the  ultimate  truth  of  the  universe,  so  it  embodies  for  mankind 
his  mind  and  life  ;  and  it  is  by  these  in  their  union  that  the 
religion  is  constituted.  And  there  is  a  parallel  between  the 
creative  process  in  the  personal  and  in  the  natural  religions. 
These  latter  arose  from  the  intercourse  of  mind  with  nature  ; 
but  the  former  from  the  intercourse  of  mind  with  certain 


IN    THE    FOUNDER    AND    HIS    SOCIETY     265 

historical  personalities.  Nature  in  the  one  case,  the  per- 
sonality in  the  other,  represent  the  objects  to  be  interpreted  ; 
in  both  cases  mind  brings  the  regulative  ideas  and  inter- 

o  o 

pretative  categories  to  the  object.  Those  ideas  and 
categories  which  are,  in  the  one  case,  latent  in  mind,  are 
educed,  explicated,  and  verified  in  the  course  of  its  en- 
deavour to  interpret  nature  and  comprehend  itself;  but  in 
the  other  case,  these  ideas  and  categories  which  have  become 
explicit  for  thought  through  its  being  exercised  on  the 
ancestral  religion  and  the  problems  it  has  raised  receive 
expansion  and,  as  it  were,  concretion  by  application  to  the 
historical  person.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  parallel  pro- 
cesses justify  the  very  dissimilar  results,  but  it  means  that 
as  the  processes  are  rational  the  formulated  results  must  be 
judged  by  analytic  and  comparative  criticism.  But  the  time 
for  applying  this  canon  is  not  yet. 

A  founded  religion  may  be  defined,  then,  as  a  religion  whose 
ultimate  truth  is  an  historical  person  speculatively  construed. 
This  definition,  with  the  discussion  which  has  led  up  to  it,  will 
help  us  to  determine  what  religions  fall  within  this  category. 

§11.    Impersonal  Religions  Classified  as  Personal 

We  must  exclude  three  religions,  which  are  often  reckoned 
as  founded  or  personal,  those  of  ancient  Persia,  of  China,  and 
of  Israel,  which  are,  respectively,  ascribed  to  Zoroaster,  to 
Confucius,  and  to  Moses.  Of  these,  Zoroaster  is  a  person 
known  only  by  the  aid  of  dubious  documents,  late  in  origin, 
imperfectly  understood,  uncertain  in  date  and  in  worth,  and 
representing  a  religion  whose  history,  broken  and  discontinu- 
ous, it  is  impossible  critically  to  construe.  Taken  at  the  best 
Zoroaster  is  a  teacher  and  reformer,  not  a  founder,  and  his 
religion  has  an  archaeological  rather  than  an  historical  and 
living  interest.  But  of  the  other  t\vo  something  more  posi- 
tive mav  be  said. 


266    CONFUCIUS    A   SAGE   AND   STATESMAN 

I.  Nothing  could  be  less  correct  than  to  describe  the 
classical  and  imperial  religion  of  China  as  the  Confucian. 
Confucius  did  not  create  it,  did  not  mean  to  do  more  than 
maintain  it  in  its  integrity,  or,  to  use  the  term  which  best 
expresses  his  mind,  "  transmit  it,"  just  as  it  had  been  loved 
and  observed  by  the  fathers  before  him.  He  studiously 
avoided  saying  or  doing  anything  which  the  ancients  would 
have  disapproved ;  in  their  maxims  and  customs  he  found 
the  wisdom  which  he,  illumined  by  experience,  applied  to 
the  regulation  of  life,  public  and  private.  He  stayed 
within  his  own  province,  a  counsellor  of  kings,  a  guide  of 
States,  an  instructor  of  statesmen ;  and  discouraged  as 
needless  all  inquiry  touching  what  was  before  birth,  after 
death,  or  above  and  behind  the  visible.  As  a  son  he  illus- 
trated reverence  ;  as  a  citizen  he  exemplified  obedience, 
though  to  sovereignty  rather  than  to  any  person  as  sovereign ; 
as  a  magistrate  he  cultivated  virtue,  tempering  justice  with 
mercy  and  making  the  people's  good  his  chief  concern  ;  as  a 
teacher  he  never  forgot  his  disciples,  but  loved  to  open  their 
eyes  to  the  lessons  and  the  duties  suggested  by  common 
things.  The  heaven  he  thought  of  and  believed  in  was  a 
happy  kingdom  ;  his  saints  and  sages  were  the  persons  who 
could  create  and  administer  its  laws  ;  his  religion  was  the  way 
by  which  it  could  be  made  to  come.  He  loved  and  observed 
the  ceremonies  that  turned  the  peasant  into  a  well-mannered 
gentleman,  and  made  the  king  a  man  while  a  ruler.  He 
collected  and  edited  the  songs  of  his  people,  for  he  believed 
that  they  were  the  best  allies  of  law  and  formed  in  men  the 
law-abiding  mind.  He  recorded  the  words  and  the  acts  of  the 
wisest  chiefs,  and  described  the  contentment  which  came  from 
a  virtuous  reign.  He  made  literature  a  mirror  into  which 
kings  and  peoples  alike  could  look,  see  themselves  and  their 
times,  and  learn  to  admire  the  good  and  despise  the  evil. 
But  he  intended  only  to  conserve  what  was  old,  though  it  was 
an  idealized  age,  the  creature  of  the  imagination  rather  than 


NOT   THE   FOUNDER   OF   A   RELIGION      267 

the  reflexion  of  experience ;  and  the  last  thing  he  dreamed  of 
doing  was  to  establish  a  new  religion.  And  his  people,  who 
have  loved  him  well,  have  understood  him  perfectly.  He  is 
to  them  the  ideal  embodiment  of  a  religion  at  once  domestic 
and  civil,  without  a  priesthood  but  with  duties  defined  by  the 
home  and  the  State.  They  have  built  temples  in  his  honour, 
but  to  him  as  sage,  not  as  God.  Their  worship,  properly  so 
called,  is  reserved  either  for  the  heaven  which  is  above  all  and 
enfolds  all,  or  for  the  ancestors  who  have  made  the  family 
and  love  the  families  they  have  made.  In  the  former  case 
the  worship  is  conducted  by  the  emperor  as  head  of  the  State  ; 
in  the  latter,  by  the  father  as  head  of  the  household  ;  for  the 
most  common  of  all  beliefs  in  China  is  this,  that  the  spirits  of 
the  dead  can  never  be  happy  without  the  sacrifices  and 
progress  of  their  living  descendants. 

But  this  simple  religion  existed  ages  before  Confucius  ;  his 
words  and  acts  may  have  interpreted  it,  his  wisdom  have 
sanctioned  it,  his  example  enriched  it  and  stamped  it  with 
the  approval  of  the  greatest  immortal  of  his  race,  but  he 
loved  it  too  well  to  wish  to  see  it  changed,  especially  by  or 
because  of  himself.  His  character  is  best  described  in  his 
own  words  of  true  yet  proud  humility  ;  he  was  "  simply  a 
man  who  in  his  eager  pursuit  of  knowledge  forgot  his  food  ; 
who  in  the  joy  of  its  attainment  forgot  his  sorrows,  and  who 
therefore  did  not  perceive  that  old  age  was  coming  on."  lie 
who  could  so  speak  of  himself  might  be  a  sage,  but  he  was 
not  the  founder  of  a  religion. 

2.  What  the  religion  of  Israel  owes  to  Moses  is  a  point 
criticism  finds  it  hard,  if  not  impossible,  to  determine  ;  and  to 
attempt  to  determine  it  here  would  cany  us  into  a  field  of 
discussion  alien  to  the  problem  and  purpose  of  this  book. 
Hut,  happily,  we  are  not  specially  concerned  with  the  literarv 
questions  as  to  the  rise  of  monotheism,  or  as  to  the  mode  and 
time  of  its  origin,  but  with  the  discovery  of  a  cause  sufficient 
to  explain  it  and  constant  enough  in  operation  to  show  how 


268        MONOTHEISM    NOT   THE    CREATION 

it  overcame  a  multitude  of  hostile  forces  subtly  and  cease- 
lessly active.  Now  the  more  we  conceive  its  rise  to  have 
been  gradual  the  less  can  we  attribute  it  to  any  single  man. 
And  there  are  two  significant  things  here  :  (a)  the  religion, 
when  we  get  to  know  it,  and  so  far  as  we  do  know  it,  is 
national  rather  than  personal ;  and  (£)  the  idea  that  governed 
its  history  was  the  God  who  gave  the  law  and  not  the  man 
who  received  it. 

The  first  of  these  positions  signifies  that  the  constant  cause 
which  produced  monotheism  and  never  ceased  to  operate 
till  it  had  been  perfected,  was  more  racial  than  individual. 
What  used  to  be  termed  "  the  monotheistic  instinct,"  1  the 
peculiar  endowment  of  the  Semitic  race,  became  in  Israel 
the  passion  to  conceive  God  as  one,  and  Jehovah  as  the 
only  God.  The  belief  in  its  earliest  form  may  have  been 
crude,  and  the  theistic  idea  may  have  been  so  loosely  con- 
ceived as  to  be  predicable  of  a  multitude  of  beings  of  varying 
ranks  and  differing  powers  ;  but  all  the  more  is  there  needed 
for  the  emergence  of  an  absolute  and  exclusive  unity,  the 
operation  of  a  permanent  cause  like  a  race.  Polytheism  was 
in  the  air  ;  it  represented  common  and  spontaneous  beliefs  ; 
it  had  flourished  under  the  older  and  higher  civilizations  ; 
it  was  the  faith  of  all  the  dwellers  in  Canaan,  of  all  the  cog- 
nate families  and  tribes  :  why,  then,  did  Israel  alone  escape  it  ? 
Much  has  been  made  of  the  fact  that  he  is  often  polytheistic 
in  idea  and  feeling  and  act,  in  custom,  in  speech  and 
inclination  ;  but  we  forget  what  the  English  civilian  in 
India  could  illustrate  out  of  his  own  experience,  how 
impossible  it  was  for  Israel,  situated  as  he  was,  wrestling 
with  the  poverty  of  speech  and  against  strong  tendencies 
in  human  nature,  to  be  anything  else.  The  fact  we  have 
to  reckon  with  is  the  persistent  growth,  in  the  face  of  the 
mightiest  adverse  forces,  of  this  monotheistic  idea.  And  the 
persistence  is  the  more  extraordinary  that  the  idea  stood 

1  Ante,  p.  217 


OF    MOSES    BUT    OF    ISRAEL  269 

alone  in  a  sort  of  naked  simplicity,  unsupported  by  the 
fellowship  or  countenance  of  kindred  ideas.  It  was  not 
made  by  any  system  of  thought,  but  had  to  make  its  own 
system.  And  here  the  significance  of  the  second  position 
will  appear  ;  the  history  of  Israel  did  not  so  much  produce 
the  monotheistic  idea  as  the  idea  produced  the  history. 
It  made  him  ;  it  is  his  sole  claim  to  remembrance  :  but  what 
a  claim  it  is !  How  it  places  this  rude,  fierce,  and  intolerant 
people  in  the  forefront  of  the  benefactors  of  mankind  !  And 
throughout  it  appears  as  the  work  of  the  family,  rather  than 
of  any  single  man.  Moses  may  have  been  the  legislator 
of  the  family,  yet  he  was  not  its  sole  or  sovereign  authority 
in  religion  ;  others  stand  by  his  side,  come  after  him,  rise 
above  him,  even  supersede  him.  His  name  subsumes  the 
law  and  he  becomes  the  synonym  of  rules  that  bind  but  do 
not  govern.  The  note  of  the  founder  is  that  he  is  indis- 
pensable, he  without  whom  the  religion  could  not  have  been. 
And  monotheism  could  have  been  without  Moses  but  not 
without  Israel.  Yet  the  legislator,  alike  in  what  he  did  not 
do  and  in  what  he  did,  perfectly  impersonates  the  idea.  If 
we  conceive  him  to  have  lived  in  Egypt  and  to  have  been 
acquainted  with  its  worship,  it  is  marvellous  how  little  of 
its  religion  he  brought  away  with  him — nothing  of  its  ideas 
of  the  future,  of  the  fate  and  treatment  and  judgment  of 
the  dead,  of  its  sacred  animals  and  signs,  of  its  symbolism, 
its  temples,  its  priesthoods,  its  nomenclature  and  its  mystic 
lore.  Yet  if  it  suggested  to  him  the  idea  that  the  law  of 
God  was  a  moral  law  which  the  state  that  took  Him  for  its 
Sovereign  was  bound  to  obey,  then  it  was  the  mother  of 
the  most  potent  and  fruitful  of  all  the  beliefs  that  have 
worked  for  the  amelioration  of  religion.  For  by  this  idea 
both  God  and  religion  have  been  morali/ed,  and  monotheism 
saved  from  falling  into  a  monism,  which  must  always  eon- 
ceive  deity  under  physical  or  metaphysical,  rather  than  under 
ethical  categories.  I  then,  Israel  was  the  organ  and  vehicle 


270     BUDDHA   THE    CREATOR    AND    IDEAL 

of  the  religion,  Moses  may  be  described  as  not  only  its  law- 
giver, but,  as  the  later  literature  conceived  him,  as  its  prophet, 
as  indeed  the  greatest  because  the  first  of  the  prophets,  the 
type  of  the  ideal  servant  of  God  whose  voice  men  were  to 
hear  and  obey.  And  a  higher  achievement  than  this  no 
reformer  or  legislator  could  perform. 

§  III.     Religions,  Founded  and  Personal 

There  remain  to  be  considered  as  in  the  strict  or  proper 
sense  founded  religions,  Buddhism,  Islam,  and  Christianity 
the  three  which  have  already  been  described  as  missionary.1 
How  did  they  come  to  be  religions,  as  distinguished  from 
sects  or  schools?  What  part  did  their  respective  founders, 
Buddha,  Mohammed,  Jesus,  play  in  their  creation  ?  What 
reciprocal  significance  in  each  of  these  cases  has  the  founder 
for  the  religion  and  the  religion  for  the  founder  ? 


A.  BUDDHA  AND  HIS  RELIGION 

I.  The  significance  of  Buddha  as  a  philosophical  teacher2 
and  a  religious  personality3  has  already  been  sketched.  What 
we  have  now  to  do  is  to  show  the  process  by  which  he ' 
became  what  is  termed  the  founder  of  a  religion.  We  begin 
by  noting  his  undisputed  supremacy  in  his  own  church  ;  it 
lives  by  faith  in  him  and  in  what  he  stands  for.  There  is 
no  image  so  familiar  to  the  East  as  his  ;  he  sits  everywhere, 
in  monastery,  pagoda,  and  sacred  place,  cross-legged,  medi- 
tative, impassive,  resigned,  the  ideal  of  quenched  desire, 
without  any  line  of  care  or  thought  to  disturb  the  ineffable 
calm  or  mar  the  sweetness  of  his  unsmiling  yet  gracious  face  ; 
a  silent  deity  who  bids  the  innumerable  millions  who  worship 
him  become  as  blessed  by  being  as  placid  as  he  is.  And 
the  belief  which  the  image  symbolizes  is  not  of  yesterday  ; 

1  Ante,  p.  230.  2  Ante.  pp.  118-21.  3  pp.  24044. 


OF  A  RELIGION  MISSIONARY  YET  INDIAN  271 

it  is  as  old  as  Buddha's  church.  The  ancient  formula  of 
discipleship  confesses  the  sufficiency  of  the  Teacher,  his  doc- 
trine, and  His  order  for  all  the  needs  of  man.  The  council 
which  met  on  the  eve  of  his  death  knew  the  formula, 
spoke  of  him  as  the  exalted,  the  enlightened  one,  whose 
word  saved  and  with  whom  was  the  secret  of  a  holy  life. 
The  second  council,  held  about  a  hundred  years  later, 
proves  the  existence  of  sacred  texts,  definite  doctrines,  and 
an  operative  order.  And  these  carry  us  near  enough  to  the 
founder  to  make  us  sure  that,  however  much  his  history 
may  have  been  embellished  by  the  retrospective  imagination, 
he  was  no  subjective  ideal  or  mere  lay  figure  arrayed  in 
the  worn  out  garments  of  the  old  solar  mythology,  but  a 
real  being  of  flesh  and  blood,  though  in  genius  ancient  and 
Indian  rather  than  modern  and  European.  The  world  he 
moves  in  is  too  actual  to  allow  us  to  dissolve  him  into 
unreality.  It  is  very  different  from  the  Vedic  world,  but 
no  less  concrete  and  coherent,  with  men  and  women  tem- 
pered by  climate  and  changed  by  experience,  but  as  true  to 
type  and  time.  Instead  of  the  song  we  have  the  epilogue  ; 
instead  of  the  hymn,  with  its  clear  speech  and  praise  of 
a  God  \vho  has  never  been  doubted,  \ve  have  minds  that 
have  speculated  till  faith  has  failed  and  they  have  been 
compelled  to  ask,  Who  will  show  us  any  go xl  and  tell 
us  whether  there  be  any  God,  what  we  may  call  and  how 
we  may  find  Him?  Yet  this  India  of  the  fifth  century  i;.C. 
is  as  real  as  the  Vedic  India  of  five  or  even  ten  centuries 
earlier.  It  is  a  land  where  kings  are  powerful,  chiefs  are 
rich,  priests  influential,  and  peasants  diligent  ;  where  castes 
are  strong  and  jealous  of  privilege,  and  the  out-casted  the 
most  pitiable  of  men.  Religion  is  the  great  concern,  and 
men  love  it  too  well  to  allow  it  to  become  an  alfair  of  the 
priesthood,  and  conceive  it  to  be  a  mother  of  truth  and 
thought  rather  than  custom  and  ritual.  And  so  they  feel 
the  priest's  forms  to  be  tedious  and  divisive,  while  his 


272  THE    INDIA   OF   BUDDHA 

sacrifices  seem  too  cruel  to  be  acceptable  to  the  gentleness 
that  ought  to  be  the  soul  of  all  things.  The  seekers  after 
a  more  excellent  way  fill  the  land,  ascetics  who  have 
renounced  all  worldly  pleasures  that  they  may  attain  a 
beatitude  without  lust  or  desire ;  mendicants  who  have 
ceased  to  toil  and  spin  that  they  may  begin  the  quest  of 
the  supreme  good  ;  pious  men  who  torture  themselves  that 
they  may  win  the  applause  of  a  deity  who  loves  self-in- 
flicted pain  ;  disciples  who  seek  a  master  ;  itinerant  sages 
who  offer  to  teach  wisdom  in  the  places  where  the  con- 
sciously ignorant  congregate. 

In  the  eastern  region  of  this  land,  a  region  imperfectly 
Brahmanized,  which  may  be  described,  in  comparison  with 
the  sacred  and  ancient  Vedic  country  lying  to  the  westward 
as  "  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles,"  the  man  who  is  to  be  the 
Buddha  is  born.  The  priest  has  not  as  yet  here  completed 
his  usurpation,  nor  have  the  king  and  noble  lost  their  ancient 
functions  in  religion  ;  while  the  spirit  which  compels  man 
to  conceive  himself  as  made  for  eternity  rules  the  selecter 
minds.  By  his  birth  the  man  has  in  him  the  blood  of 
kings  and  warriors,  but  by  instinct  and  temper  the  love 
of  eternal  things.  He  inherited  the  faith  of  his  people, 
believed  that  he  was  fated  to  move  through  the  immense 
and  awful  cycle  of  successive  births  and  deaths,  and  he 
desired  early  and  complete  emancipation.  The  priestly 
method  of  attaining  it  seemed  to  him  too  slow,  circuitous, 
and  uncertain  ;  and  was  he  not  of  the  race  of  men  Nature 
had  made  priests  before  art  or  custom  created  Brahmans  ? 
And  so  he  enquired  of  many  teachers,  but  they  did  not 
help  ;  he  tried  many  methods— asceticism,  self-torture,  renun- 
ciation— but  in  vain.  At  last  meditation  showed  him  how 
through  suppression  of  desire  to  escape  from  sorrow  and 
enter  into  the  Nirvana  which  is  perfect  peace.  When  he 
had  attained  this  knowledge  he  became  Buddha,  the 
enlightened  ;  and  after  he  had  overcome  the  temptation 


HIS    PHILOSOPHY    AND    DISCIPLINE        273 

to  keep  his  secret  he  began  to  preach  it,  leading  men 
through  disci pleship  and  his  order  into  the  way  whose  end 
was  everlasting  peace. 

2.  Buddha  thus  became  a  teacher  of  a  kind  as  common  in 
India  then  as  now.  There  the  man  with  a  message  never 
wants  a  hearing,  nor,  if  his  message  has  promise  or  helpful- 
ness, does  he  ever  want  a  following.  The  history  of  post- 
Vedic  religion  is  but  the  biography  of  teachers,  now  ascetic, 
now  scholastic,  now  social,  now  mystic,  now  rational,  who 
have  formed  schools  and  founded  sects,  without  ceasing  to  be 
Hindus ;  on  the  contrary,  only  the  more  expanding  and 
realizing  Hinduism.  And  Buddha  so  acted  in  the  way  of 
his  people  as  to  exhibit  evolution  rather  than  revolution. 
And  he  himself  could  not  do  otherwise  ;  the  logic  that 
changed  development  into  revolt  came  from  his  society.  Yet 
the  premisses  on  which  it  argued  and  acted  were  his.  His 
philosophy  was  not  orthodox  ;  it  did  not  build  on  the  Vedas, 
it  denied  the  reality  of  Brahma  and  the  persistence  of  the 
soul.  It  agreed  indeed  with  the  older  schools  in  affirming 
that  salvation  was  by  knowledge  rather  than  by  priestly 
sacrifice  and  ritual  ;  but,  unlike  them,  it  did  not  seek  the 
knowledge  in  a  priestly  service,  or  call  its  object  by  a  priestly 
name.  The  Brahmans  were  to  him  like  a  chain  of  blind 
men,  none  of  whom  saw  anything,  and  whose  faith  and  dis- 
course were  alike  vain.  Their  sacrifices  were  at  once  foolish 
and  ineffectual,  cruel  and  profitless.  The  only  sacrifice  that 
became  a  king  was  the  repair  of  all  injustice  ;  that  became  a 
man  was  the  cessation  from  lying  and  deceit,  from  the  lust 
that  coveted  and  worked  unchasi  ity,  from  the  passion  that 
killed  to  increase  fleshly  pleasure.  Self-torture  was  no  sacrifice, 
had  no  merit,  and  gained  no  good.  In  an  unknown  tongue 
there  was  no  sanctity.  Truth  did  not  become  truer,  nor  did 
excellence  grow  better  by  being  stated  in  Sanskrit  ;  the  speech 
the  people  knew  was  the  fittest  medium  for  the  teacher.  And 
the  more  people  knew  the  truth  the  greater  the  number  tliat 

I'.C.R.  iS 


274  APOTHEOSIS  THROUGH  THE  CHURCH 

would  be  saved.  But  truth  involved  duty  ;  by  obedience  the 
knowledge  was  proved  to  be  real,  and  the  measure  of  perfec- 
tion was  the  degree  of  their  harmony.  Hence  Buddha's 
society  was  twofold  :  an  inner  circle — a  church  or  order,  and 
an  outer  circle— the  adherents.  The  former  were  made  up 
of  the  called  or  chosen,  men  and  women  who  renounced 
everything  and  became  mendicants,  monks  and  nuns,  persons 
who  had  the  vocation  to  a  holy  life.  Celibacy  and  chastity 
were  fundamental  principles  in  a  system  which  seeks  to  end 
the  existence  which  is  misery.  The  adherents  were  the  de- 
vout, those  who  believed  in  the  Buddha,  but  were  not  strong 
enough  to  make  the  great  renunciation,  and  break  the  fetters 
that  bound  them  to  the  sensuous  world.  The  cardinal  idea 
of  the  system  is  an  individualism  which  is  best  when  rea- 
lized in  the  social  medium  that  promises  to  make  an  end  of 
the  individual.  This  individualism  governs  it  throughout. 
Its  one  authority  is  an  individual  beside  whom  no  second 
stands.  Every  individual  is  a  self-sufficing  unit,  charged 
with  the  care  and  the  control  of  his  own  destiny,  who  has  the 
right  of  his  own  free  will  to  make  the  last  surrender,  but  on 
whom  no  other  has  any  right  to  lay  a  violent  hand.  The 
happiest  being  is  he  on  whom  the  love  of  the  only  life  he  has 
power  over — his  own — has  died  ;  the  next  in  happiness  is  he 
who  so  loves  all  being  that  he  will  inflict  suffering  on  none. 
The  first  has  become  a  saint  and  attained  Nirvana ;  the 
second  has  entered  upon  the  path,  and  will  in  due  season 
reach  the  goal. 

3.  But  do  the  narrative  of  Buddha's  life,  and  the  interpreta- 
tion of  his  mind,  taken  by  themselves,  explain  the  rise  of  the 
religion  called  Buddhism  ?  There  is  a  teacher,  a  school  he 
founds,  scholars  that  revere  him,  multitudes  that  admire  him, 
and  a  message  he  delivers  concerning  the  knowledge  that 
saves,  but  these  things,  even  more  in  India  than  in  Europe, 
do  not  found  a  religion,  they  only  constitute  a  sect.  Now 
what  turned  the  school  or  sect  into  a  religion  ?  It  was  the 


INCARNATION    NO    DISTINCTION  275 

event  or  process  which  we  may  term,  all  the  more  fitly  that 
the  system  knows  no  god,  the  apotheosis  of  Buddha.  The 
process  was  twofold,  though  the  result  was  one,  an  imagina- 
tive and  a  speculative,  or  a  mythological  and  a  philosophical. 
The  starting  point  was  the  master  or  teacher,  the  man,  the 
Buddha,  the  Illuminated,  who  revealed  to  the  ignorant  the 
way  of  life.  His  manhood  was  not  denied  ;  on  the  contrary, 
its  reality  was  the  primary  assumption  which  made  the  crea- 
tive process  possible.  Deities  are  too  common  and  too 
easily  discovered  in  India  to  have  much  significance  ;  they 
appear  everywhere  in  everything,  and  can  be  made  to  become 
anything.  Incarnations  are  as  common  as  deities,  and  as 
insignificant  ;  and  to  them  it  is  more  natural  to  assume  an 
animal  or  a  monstrous,  than  a  human  form.  Hence  to  have 
conceived  Buddha  as  a  deity  or  as  the  incarnation  of  a  deity 
would  have  been  to  deprive  him  of  all  distinction,  to  have 
made  the  fall  of  his  school  into  a  sect  inevitable,  and  the 
rise  of  a  religion  bearing  his  name  impossible.  Individuality, 
then,  is  his  attribute  ;  he  is  himself,  and  not  simply  the  form 
of  another.  He  has  incommunicable  properties,  has  a  will  of 
his  own  which  performs  duty  and  shapes  character,  and  is 
not  the  mere  mask  of  an  unknown  and  irresponsible  power. 
Hence  comes  the  belief  that  he  is  an  ethical  being,  that  his 

O  ' 

chief  qualities  are  moral,  that  his  virtues,  his  grace  and 
wisdom,  his  goodwill  and  kindness  are  his,  and  are  real,  and 
that  out  of  his  intrinsic  qualities  all  his  beneficent  acts  have 
issued.  This  was  a  new  notion  in  India  ;  it  was  substituting 
an  ethical  for  a  metaphysical  conception,  and  reaching  the 
universe  through  the  idea  of  a  moral  man  rather  than  through 
the  abstract  idea  of  soul  or  substance.  And  here  the  my- 
thological process  began  ;  the  Buddha  it  transformed  was 
a  living  being,  for  the  moment  the  imagination  touches 
death  and  the  abstract  they  are  quickened  and  personified. 
He  was,  therefore,  not  allowed  to  begin  to  be  with  birth,  or 
to  cease  to  be  at  death  ;  he  became  the  personified  bench- 


276     HIS    HUMANITY   HUMANIZES    ETHICS 

cence  of  the  universe,  doing  good  in  all  worlds  and  in  all 
ages  to  all  kinds  and  classes  of  suffering  creatures  ;  and  the 
people  that  meditated  before  his  image,  or  spoke  of  him  to 
the  multitudes,  clothed  their  faith  in  the  forms  that  their 
imagination  supplied.  What  the  process  achieved  we  may 
learn  not  simply  from  the  "  Birth  Stories,"  but  from  the  sober 
and  often  prosaic  narratives  of  the  Chinese  pilgrims.  Hiuen 
Tsiang,  a  doctor  learned  in  the  law,  skilled  in  all  the 
subtilties  of  what  we  foolishly  call  Nihilistic  Buddhism, 
gravely  tells  how  at  this  stupa,  or  that  sacred  place,  the 
Blessed  One  had  descended  and  confounded  a  sinner,  or 
helped  a  saint,  or  built  of  precious  stones  some  tabernacle  for 
men  to  pray  in.  And  as  the  imagination  clothed  him  in  a 
suitable  mythology,  so  the  speculative  reason  resolved  him 
into  "  the  eldest,  the  noblest  of  beings,"  and  surrounded  him 
with  an  army  of  "  exalted,  holy,  universal  Buddhas,"  though 
he  alone  remained  the  author  of  eternal  salvation.  And  as  on 
the  one  side  he  personified  the  moral  energies  of  the  universe, 
so  on  the  other  he  became  the  governing  ideal  and  example 
of  human  duty,  the  humanity  of  the  standard  making  the 
ethics  humane.  And  it  was  this  transcendental  interpreta- 
tion of  its  founder,  his  apotheosis  as  we  have  termed  it, 
which  made  Buddhism  a  religion.  The  process  may  or  may 
not  have  been  legitimate,  but  it  was  here  the  only  possible 
method  of  creation.  Unless  Buddha  had  been  man,  we 
should  never  have  had  his  system  or  his  influence  ;  unless  he 
had  been  conceived  as  more  than  man,  we  should  never  have 
had  his  religion.  The  elevation  and  beauty  of  his  humanity, 
when  applied  to  the  supreme  object  of  worship,  marked  an 
immense  advance  on  all  prior  notions  of  deity  in  the  Orient ; 
but  its  want  of  a  theistic  basis  left  it  nebulous  and  void, 
save  for  the  pious  imagination,  which  can  be  legitimately  and 
finally  satisfied  only  by  the  satisfaction  of  the  reason. 


THE    ARAB    AND    THE^  HINDU  277 

B.    MOHAMMED  AND  ISLAM 

I.  Mohammed  divides  with  Buddha  and  the  Brahman 
the  religious  sovereignty  of  the  Oriental  mind,  yet  the 
sovereignties  are  in  idea,  in  type,  and  in  form  worlds  apart. 
All  three  are  rooted  in  religion,  but  the  faith  of  the  Brahman 
is  a  polytheism  so  multitudinous  and  tolerant  as  to  include 
everything  that  men  may  call  deity,  if  only  the  deity  will 
consent  to  be  included  and  to  be  respectful  to  those  who 
dwelt  in  the  pantheon  before  him.  The  sovereignty  of 
Buddha  is  that  of  the  ideal  man  and  the  idealized  pity, 
which,  without  concern  or  care  for  any  god,  draws  humanity 
toward  the  dreamless  beatitude  he  has  himself  attained;  while 
Mohammed's  is  strictly  derivative  and  representative,  due  to 
his  being  the  one  sufficient  and  authoritative  spokesman  of  the 
one  Merciful  and  Almighty  God.  The  Brahman's  sovereignty 
is  social  and  heritable,  came  to  him  by  the  blood  which 
defined  his  place  and  function  in  society  as  well  as  his  office 
before  the  gods  and  on  behalf  of  men  ;  but  both  Buddha's 
and  Mohammed's  may  be  described  as  in  a  sense  personal, 
though  it  was  acquired  by  the  one  through  his  own  efforts, 
achievements,  and  merits,  and  granted  to  the  other  by  the 
will  and  deed  of  his  God.  The  sovereignty  of  the  Brahman 
is  expressed  in  the  society  he  has  organized,  the  system, 
at  once  natural  and  artificial,  of  caste;  while  Buddha's  is 
expressed  in  a  society  whose  orders  correspond  to  his  theory 
of  merit,  and  Mohammed's  in  a  brotherhood  where  all  are 
equal  before  a  God  too  great  to  know  any  respect  of  persons. 
The  image,  or  the  symbol,  of  his  god  which  the  Brahman 
loves  is  to  Mohammed  but  a  shameful  and  emptv  idol,  while 
the  statue  which  the  Buddhist  reveres  speaks  to  him  of  a  still 
more  graceless  idolatry,  the  supersession  of  the  uncreated 
God  by  the  created  man  he  had  appointed  to  be  his  minister. 
But  though  his  sovereignty  is  not  represented  to  the  eye  by 
any  image,  it  yet  has  a  fitter  and  more  imperious  symbol, 


278  MOHAMMED   THE    MAN 

a  book  which  reveals  the  mind  of  God  and  proclaims  the 
law  which  man  is  bound  under  the  most  awful  and  inexor- 
able sanctions  to  obey.  The  worship  it  enjoins  is  one  of 
stern  yet  majestic  simplicity ;  it  concerns  God  only,  and 
there  is  but  the  one  God  who  has  made  Mohammed  his 
final  and  sovereign  prophet,  and  declared  through  him  that 
all  idols  are  "  idleness  and  vanity." 

They  have  not  any  power  ;   no,  not  over  the  husk  of  a  date. 
If  ye  call  upon  them,  they  hear  not  your  calling.1 

But  though  no  image  of  God  or  man  is  to  be  tolerated, 
yet  the  tomb  of  the  saint  is  to  be  visited  by  the  foot  of 
the  pilgrim,  and  over  it  may  rise  the  mosque  where  God 
will  be  all  the  more  devoutly  praised  that  the  dust  of  a 
servant  waits  beneath  till  the  resurrection  of  the  just. 

Now  Mohammed  is  of  all  religious  founders  the  most 
intimately  known,  and  Islam  is  the  only  religion  of  which 
it  can  be  said  it  was  born  in  the  open  day.  There  is  no 
book  more  autobiographical  than  the  Koran,  more  capable 
or  more  in  need  of  being  interpreted  through  history.  This 
makes  it  peculiarly  difficult  to  a  stolid  and  unimaginative 
Western  mind  to  be  just  either  to  the  man  or  the  religion. 
Instead  of  standing  in  the  workshop  amid  its  perplexing 
cross-lights,  lurid  fires,  blazing  furnaces,  ringing  hammers, 
torrid  heat,  and  perspiring  craftsmen,  we  sit  in  our  cool 
study,  analyze,  criticize,  award,  praise,  and  blame  as  if  the 
religion  had  been  forged  in  an  atmosphere  as  undisturbed 
and  luminous  as  our  own,  and  by  men  as  detached  and 
cultivated  as  we  assume  ourselves  to  be.  And  so  Voltaire, 
who  knew  Paris  excellently,  but  knew  nothing  of  Arabia, 
little  of  religion  and  less  of  man,  conceived  Mohammed  as 
a  lustful  hypocrite,  who  pleaded  inspiration  in  order  that  he 
might  gain  a  freer  and  fuller  licence  for  his  vice ;  while 

1   Koran  :   Sura  xxxv. 


HIS    CHARACTER    AND   EDUCATION       279 

Gibbon,  who  disliked  fanaticism,  whether  embodied  in  a 
Julian,  a  Mohammed,  or  a  Calvin,  described  Islam  as  com- 
pounded of  an  eternal  truth  and  a  necessary  falsehood,  the 
truth  being  the  unity  of  God,  the  falsehood  that  Mohammed 
was  His  prophet.  And  as  if  to  keep  us  humble  and  the 
balance  true,  we  have  one  modern  and  Christian  scholar 
tracing  his  inspiration  to  Satan,  and  another  resolving  his 
religion  into  hysteria.  But  in  history  it  is  a  useful  canon 
never  to  assume  that  great  effects  can  have  mean  causes. 
In  matters  of  faith  and  the  Spirit  nothing  fails  like  dupli- 
city and  make-believe  ;  nothing  is  so  necessary  to  success  as 
integrity  and  conviction  of  mind.  The  splendid  sincerity 
of  Mohammed's  early  disciples  sufficiently  testifies  to  the 
reality  of  his  own  ;  but  he  was  sincere  in  the  manner  of 
an  Arab  and  an  unlettered  visionary.  We  must  imagine 
this  Arab  as  a  delicate,  posthumous  child  nursed  by  the 
Bedouin,  early  left  without  a  mother,  first  to  the  care  of  a 
grandfather,  then  of  uncles  kindly  disposed  but  critical. 
He  grew  into  a  boy  who  loved  to  commune  with  nature 
and  gather  the  wild  berries  as  he  tended  his  flocks ;  he 
became  a  youth  with  few  companions,  with  a  soul  that 
sickened  at  the  coarser  vices,  meditative,  sensitive  to  suffer- 
ing, susceptible  to  the  finer  emotions,  shrinking  from  pain, 
and  destitute  of  the  physical  courage  which  easily  turned 
into  ferocity,  and  which  the  Arab  admired  as  the  bravery 
proper  to  a  man.  In  his  solitude  great  thoughts  came  to 
him  ;  travel  and  intercourse  with  men  brought  glimpses 
into  a  larger  world  than  Arabia  knew  of.  Marriage,  bring- 
ing wealth,  supplied  him  with  the  opportunities  for  silence, 
solitude,  and  visions,  which  reflected  his  richer  experience. 
He  had  heard  of  the  Jewish  patriarchs,  and  the  story  of 
Abraham,  the  friend  of  God  and  the  father  of  Ishmael  ; 
it  touched  his  imagination,  and  he  saw  the  Arab  tribes 
unified,  their  sacred  places  purged,  themselves  made  the 
heirs  of  the  promise,  and  their  deities,  Lat  and  Ozza  and 


280  THE    VISION    OF    ABRAHAM 

Marat  cast  out  by  the  one  supreme  God.  He  heard  of 
Moses,  and  he  learned  to  think  of  God,  the  lawgiver, 
calling  His  people  into  the  wilderness,  forming  them  into 
a  state  where  idolatry  was  forbidden,  and  the  prophet  was 
the  voice  of  God.  He  thought  of  these  things  in  the  way 
of  an  imaginative  man  till  they  took  hold  of  him,  possessed, 
inspired  him,  forced  him  into  speech. 

Cry  !  in  the  name  of  thy  Lord  who  created—- 
Created man  from  clots  of  blood.1 

In  a  passage  of  amazing  beauty  and  majesty,  which  may 
well  be  read  as  a  chapter  from  his  own  experience,  he 
pictures  Abraham  3  called  from  his  idols  to  the  faith  in  the 
one  God.  The  evening  falls  and  the  stars  come  out  one 
by  one  in  the  lustrous  evening  heaven,  and  he  cries, 
"This,  indeed,  is  the  Most  High";  but  the  moon  rises, 
and  they  fade,  and  he  thinks,  "  Here  is  the  Being  I 
must  worship."  Then  the  dawn  breaks,  the  moon  pales, 
and  the  sun  rises  out  of  the  bosom  of  night,  and  he 
bends  before  this  all-glorious  luminary  as  the  light  which 
is  God  ;  but  the  day  ends,  night  and  darkness  return, 
and  Abraham  thinks  the  Eternal  can  never  pass  and  be 
eclipsed,  and  he  says,  "  I  turn  my  face  to  Him  who  hath 
created  the  heavens  and  the  earth." 

2.  The  monotheism  of  the  Semite,  simple,  inflexible,  sove- 
reign, had  at  last  found  a  fit  organ,  and  from  the  call  of 
God  there  could  be  no  turning  back.  But  though  Moham- 
med must  speak,  he  could  not  always  convert ;  a  few,  his 
wife,  a  slave,  a  friend  believed ;  some  hesitated,  many 
doubted,  the  vast  majority  denied  and  hated  as  only  the 
untutored  mind  can  hate  when  it  sees  its  ancient  gods 

1  Sura  xcvi. 

2  Sura  vi.     Cf.   the  Jewish  prototype   in  Geiger,    Was  hat  Moh.  aus 
dem  Jiidenthii'n  aufgenommen?  pp.  123-125.     It  will  help  us  the  more 
to  feel  the  beauty  that  may  be  conferred  by  the  touch  of  genius. 


ISLAM    AND    THE    SWORD  281 

scorned  and  dismissed  for  a  God  it  does  not  see.  Hence 
came  years  of  conflict,  force  pitted  against  faith,  strength 
against  weakness.  Exasperation,  pain,  and  death  confronted 
the  prophet  and  his  religion.  Then  Medina  opened  her 
arms,  and  called,  and,  helped  by  what  has  ever  seemed  to 
the  imagination  of  his  people  a  series  of  miracles,  he  stole 
out  of  Mecca,  and  by  his  flight  saved  himself  and  founded 
Islam.  And  what  he  founded  was  not  only  a  religion,  but 
a  State,  the  two  being  one.  The  ideas  were  there,  the 
omnipotent  God,  the  mortal  man  ;  heaven  for  the  faithful, 
hell  for  the  unbeliever.  But  the  institution  was  there  also, 
the  prophet,  who  was  the  voice  of  God,  his  word  which 
was  God's  truth,  the  law  which  could  not  be  broken  but 
must  be  obeyed.  And  this  law  created  a  State,  which  lived, 
as  States  must,  by  the  sword,  but  a  sword  wielded,  as  none 
had  hitherto  been,  by  the  hand  of  the  Almighty.  It  is  not 
indeed,  true  to  say  "  Islam  is  founded  on  the  sword "  ;  it 
is  founded  on  the  prophet's  word,  and  it  preaches  and 
teaches  with  a  zeal  and  a  fanaticism  no  religion  has  ever 
surpassed.  Yet  the  sword  was  used  by  the  prophet  and 
has  been  used  by  his  successors  in  a  way  unknown  to  the 
other  founded  religions.  Asoka,  the  Buddhist,  may  have 
subdued  India,  and  Constantine  may  have  conquered  the 
Roman  Empire  in  the  name  of  the  Cross  ;  but  these  were 
acts  of  violent  disobedience  and  usurpation,  for  Buddha 
did  not  love  the  battle,  and  Jesus  expressly  deplored  war 
and  condemned  the  sword.  It  is  impossible,  then,  to 
acquit  Mohammed  of  the  charge  of  spreading  his  religion 
by  the  sword,  although  he  did  not  found  up  >n  it.  For  two 
things  of  incontrovertible  historical  truth  mav  here  be  said  : 
(<7j  Without  the  sword  he  never  would  have  converted  the 
Arab  tribes  and  made  them  the  apostles  and  warriors  of 
his  religion;  and  (/>}  his  use  of  the  sword  has  sanctioned 
its  use  by  all  his  success  >rs.  Wars  of  religion  may  be  even 
more  desolating  than  those  of  military  or  political  ambition  ; 


282  SEVERITY  AND   MERCY  OF   THE    PROPHET 

but  wars  by  religion  encourage,  above  all  others,  ferocity 
and  blood-madness.  And  the  history  of  Islam,  unhappily, 
abounds  in  proofs  of  this  fact  But  even  in  his  wars 
Mohammed  did  not  forget  his  religion,  though  his  mind- 
fulness  but  showed  the  old  Arab  alive  within  him.  The 
spoils  taken  from  the  enemy  enriched  the  brotherhood, 
being  divided  according  to  principles  of  merit  and  equity. 
If  the  nearest  kinsman  was  an  unbeliever,  he  was  shown  no 
more  pity  than  the  most  complete  alien ;  if  the  bitterest  foe 
became  a  convert,  he  was  at  once  taken  to  the  bosom  of 
the  prophet  and  the  faith.  Of  an  unbelieving  uncle,  he 
said  : 

Blasted  be  the  hands  of  Abu  Lahab  !  and  let  himself  be  blasted  ! 
His  riches  shall  not  profit  him,  nor  what  he  has  earned  ; 
He  shall  be  cast  into  the  broiling  flame.1 

When    he   had    fought   and    conquered    Mecca,    and    had 
thrown  down  her  idols,  for 

Truth  had  come  and  falsehood  gone  ; 
For  falsehood  vanisheth  away,8 

his  magnanimity  reached  even  to  his  most  implacable  foe, 
who  now  submitted,  and  was  bidden  "  Hasten  to  the  city, 
and  say  that  none  who  taketh  refuge  in  the  house  of  Abu 
Sofian  (the  man  himself)  shall  be  harmed  this  day."  But 
another  and  no  less  significant  change  happened  at  Medina. 
Before,  Jerusalem  had  been  his  holy  city,  thither  Gabriel  had 
borne  him  on  a  winged  steed,  and  he  had  met  and  been 
welcomed  by  a  council  of  ancient  prophets.  Thence  he  had 
been  carried  into  heaven,  and  the  lips  of  God  had  com- 
manded him  and  his  people  to  pray  five  times  daily  with  faces 
towards  the  holy  Temple.  But  now  Mecca  was  idealized ; 
ancient  memories  made  her  beautiful  in  the  prophet's  sight. 
"  Thou  art  the  choicest  spot  upon  earth  to  me,  and  the 

1  Sura  cxi.  *  Sura  xvii.  82. 


HIS    RELIGION    A    STATE  283 

most  delectable,"  he  cried ;  and  the  city  of  his  love  became 
the  sacred  city  of  his  faith.  The  Divine  voice  said  :  "  Turn 
thy  face  towards  the  holy  temple  of  Mecca " ; 1  and  so 
it  henceforth  was  the  true  kibla,  the  goal  of  pilgrimage, 
with  its  once  heathenish  black  stone  and  holy  well  sanctified 
for  evermore.  But  these  ways  signified  a  radical  change  in 
the  mind  of  Mohammed.  The  prophecies  he  now  delivered 
were  occasional,  and  served  the  occasion  ;  some  were  in- 
tended to  hush  scandal,  others  to  reconcile  estranged  friends 
or  despoil  enemies,  to  proclaim  wars  or  celebrate  victories, 
to  enhearten  after  defeat,  to  regulate  worship,  or  even  to 
justify  the  prophet  in  taking  a  new  wife  to  his  home.  While 
he  lived  the  law  was  alive,  grew  daily,  and  daily  was  modified 
and  applied.  When  he  died  it  was  closed,  became  a  corpus 
which  had  to  be  interpreted,  but  could  itself  suffer  neither 
increase  nor  diminution.  His  death  saw  the  Koran  finished, 
the  State  constituted,  and  Islam  founded. 

3.  Islam  as  just  described  may  be  conceived  to  be  a  State 
rather  than  a  religion,  but  it  would  be  wrongly  so  conceived. 
For  it  is  both  a  religion  and  a  State — a  religion  by  virtue 
of  its  ideas  and  ends,  a  State  by  virtue  of  its  forms  and 
means.  As  a  religion  it  is  Semitic  rather  than  Arabian  ;  as 
a  State  it  is  Arabian  rather  than  Semitic.  As  a  religion  it 
is  secondary  and  derivative,  with  sources  partly  Jewish 
and  partly  Christian  ;  as  a  State  it  is  original  though  not 
independent,  a  dream  of  universal  dominion  conditioned  by 
the  local  customs,  tribal  polities,  and  social  order  of  Arabia. 
The  force  which  fused  these  elements  together  and  made 
them  into  the  civil  religion  or  religious  State  we  call  Islam, 
was  Mohammed.  lie  did  not  discover  the  ideas,  for  they 
existed  before  him,  but  he  translated  them  into  the  tongue 
of  Arabia,  he  made  his  beliefs  live  in  forms  so  vivid,  so  pic- 
turesque, so  full  of  poetic  charm  and  spiritual  passion  and  the 
conviction  which  may  not  be  questioned,  that  the  imagina- 

1  Sura  ii.    146. 


tions  and  consciences  of  all  who  believed  his  word  became 
as  potter's  clay  in  his  hands.  The  Koran  is  indeed  a  mar- 
vellous book,  which  speaks  with  tremendous  force  to  men 
who  can  and  do  believe  it.  Its  God  is  a  consuming  fire  in 
a  sense  quite  unknown  to  the  Old  Testament.  There  the 
future  has  but  a  feeble  or  shadowy  existence ;  the  scene 
where  Jehovah  reigns  is  more  this  world  than  the  next. 
But  in  the  Koran  if  God  is  eternal,  man  is  immortal,  and 
death  is  no  escape  from  His  hands.  In  no  religion  is  the 
other  world  so  real  as  in  Islam  ;  heaven  is  described  in  terms 
most  alluring  to  the  oriental  imagination,  hell  in  words  that 
scorch  and  blacken.  And  God  holds  man  and  his  destiny 
in  His  inexorable  hands,  awards  heaven  to  the  believer,  hell 
to  the  infidel,  no  one  being  able  to  escape  His  terrible  decree. 
The  idea  is  one  of  transcendent  power,  so  simple,  so  intelli- 
gible, so  commanding,  especially  to  those  who  feel  that  there 
is  nothing  between  them  and  this  sovereign  will.  Polytheism 
leaves  man  the  master  of  the  gods,  they  are  his  creation, 
and  if  he  despairs  of  one,  he  can  find  help  and  hope  in 
another ;  but  a  rigorous  monotheism  offers  no  alternatives, 
allows  no  concealment,  sets  man  as  it  were  naked  before  an 
eternal  Face  whose  smile  is  life  and  whose  frown  is  death. 
And  the  duties  based  on  the  idea  were  as  simple  as  the  idea 
itself.  They  were  prayer  and  fasting,  which  had  reference  to 
God  ;  almsgiving,  which  was  duty  to  the  brotherhood  ;  and 
the  pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  which  was  a  sort  of  homage  to  the 
birthplace  of  the  religion,  an  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
unity,  and  a  witness  to  the  power  of  Arabia  over  the  founder. 
But  above  all,  authenticating  all,  stood  the  prophet.  The 
God  to  be  believed  was  the  God  he  revealed  ;  to  deny  Mo- 
hammed was  to  disbelieve  God.  His  authority  was  ultimate, 
for  through  him  God  had  freely  and  finally  spoken  and  only 
through  him  could  God  be  really  known.  The  primary 
belief,  then,  in  Islam  is  not  the  unity  of  God,  but  the 
apostolate  of  Mohammed.  The  beliefs  do  not  simply  stand 


THE   MAN    INCARNATE    IN   THE    WORD    285 

indissolubly  together,  but  the  greater  is  built  upon  the  less. 
Without  the  prophet  God  would  still  be  One,  but  the  one 
God  would  not  be  believed  and  known  of  men. 

4.  Here,  then,  we  can  see  in  what  sense  Mohammed  can  be 
conceived  as  the  founder  of  the  religion.  Without  him  it 
could  not  have  been  ;  he  is  not  simply  the  medium  of  its 
realization  but  of  its  continuance.  Islam  is  the  one  absolute 
book  religion  of  the  world,  and  may  be  most  properly  defined 
as  the  Apotheosis  of  the  Word.  The  Koran  is  the  mind  of 
Mohammed  immortalized  for  his  people,  speaking  to  them, 
being  questioned  by  them,  making  their  laws,  governing  their 
lives.  His  God  is  theirs,  conceived  in  his  terms,  worshipped 
in  his  manner,  obeyed  in  his  spirit.  And  this  means  that  an 
Arab's  consciousness  of  the  sixth  century  A.D.  has  determined 
the  deity  and  governs  the  faith  of  Islam.  The  connexion 
between  the  man  and  the  religion  can  thus  be  dissolved  only 
by  the  death  of  both.  It  has  often  been  said  that  Islam 
is  of  all  the  great  religions  the  nearest  a  pure  naturalism. 
Its  earliest  history  has  few  miracles,  perhaps  none,  and  but 
for  certain  incidental  customs  the  most  strenuous  believer  in 
natural  law  might  be  a  devout  Moslem.  The  saying  is  as 
superficial  and  inaccurate  as  any  saying  of  ignorance  could 
well  be.  The  supernatural  and  the  miraculous  are  the  very 
atmosphere  which  Islam  breathes.  Mohammed  himself  is 
to  it  a  supreme  miracle.  He  stands  alone  among  men,  God's 
apostle,  without  a  rival  and  without  an  equal,  and  to  question 
his  authority  is  to  doubt  the  truth  and  veracity  of  God.  So 
cardinal  is  his  pre-eminence  to  the  theol  >gy  of  Islam  that 
how  to  conceive  the  prophet  and  yet  to  keep  him  man, 
has  been  at  once  its  most  inevitable  and  insoluble  problem. 
On  his  supremacy,  as  not  simply  personal  but  transmissible 
and  hereditary,  the  greatest  of  all  the  Mohammedan  schisms 
is  based.  And  as  with  his  person,  so  with  his  word  ;  it  is 
his  incarnation,  himself  made  immortal,  universal,  articulate. 
And  here  also  we  come  upon  a  fundamental  problem  of  the 


286  MIRACLES    IN    ISLAM 

Schools  :  how  did  the  Koran  begin  to  be,  and  when  ?  Truth 
is  eternal,  and  the  Koran  is  the  truth.  Eternity  is  thus  its 
note ;  and  though  God  showed  it  in  vision  to  Mohammed, 
and  he  told  his  vision  to  men,  yet  it  had  ever  been  in  God, 
the  light  of  his  bosom  and  the  love  of  his  heart.  The  most 
rigid  Christian  theories  of  the  sacred  canon  and  inspiration 
are  but  nebulous  dreams  compared  to  the  dogmas  which  have 
denned  and  enshrined  the  Koran.  And  this  brings  us  to 
the  miraculous  in  its  early  history  ;  the  whole  story  of  its 
coming  is  a  miracle — the  visions  of  the  prophet,  the  angels 
that  speak  to  him  and  that  carry  him  whither  they  will,  the 
God  in  whose  name  and  at  whose  bidding  he  speaks,  are  all 
miracles,  as  full  of  supernatural  ideas  and  incidents  as  the 
most  credulous  mind  could  desire.  The  very  collection  of 
the  Koran  under  Abu  Bekr,  the  destruction  under  Othman, 
fifteen  years  later,  of  all  versions  but  one,  and  the  consequent 
formation  of  a  single  authoritative  text,  signified  that  the 
book  was  held  to  be  so  miraculous  that  it  must  be  preserved 
as  their  book  of  life,  and  so  preserved  that  there  should  be 
but  one  form  of  the  prophet's  words,  these  and  no  other 
being  the  truth  of  God.  And  here  we  touch  the  point  where 
the  ideas  of  the  religion  and  the  State  coalesce.  Both  are 
positive  creations,  i.e.  are  founded  and  built  up  by  positive 
laws.  Positive  laws  are  expressions  of  a  personal  or  com- 
munal will,  the  rules  it  makes  and  the  precepts  it  formulates 
for  the  guidance  of  the  individual  and  the  ordering  of 
society.  Islam  then,  whether  conceived  as  religion  or  as 
State  or  as  both,  is  a  creation  of  positive  law,  the  work  of 
a  personal  will,  of  the  man  we  know  as  Mohammed. 

|   IV.     Canons  of  Criticism  or  Regulative  Ideas 

The  relation  of  Jesus  to  the  founding  and  formation  of 
the  Christian  religion  is  too  immense  a  subject  to  be  discussed 
as  a  subordinate  head  in  a  single  chapter  ;  but  we  may  here 


RELATION    OF    RELIGION    AND    FOUNDER  287 

formulate  certain  regulative  ideas  or  critical  principles  that 
seem  to  have  emerged  from  these  discussions. 

i  The  Founder  and  the  religion  stand  so  related  that 
neither  can  be  considered  without  the  other.  His  historical 
being  precedes  and  conditions  its  historical  origin,  and  exer- 
cises a  permanent  effect  on  its  development.  In  him  its 
qualities  lie  implicit ;  in  it  his  immanent  character  and  mind 
are  evolved.  This  means  that  the  religion  not  only  begins 
with  or  starts  from  him,  but  perpetuates  and  propagates  the 
ethical  type  he  impersonates.  Moral  character  is  thus  a 
matter  of  fundamental  importance  to  the  religion. 

ii.  The  Founder  has  an  historical  and  an  ideal  significance 
both  for  his  own  religion  and  for  philosophy  or  thought 
in  general.  The  historical  significance  concerns  not  only  the 
part  he  played  in  making  the  religion  first  possible  and 
then  actual,  but  also  the  influence  he  has  exercised  on  its 
earliest  behaviour  and  its  later  developments.  The  ideal 
significance  concerns  not  only  the  part  he  has  played  and 
been  the  means  of  making  his  religion  play  in  the  history 
of  man  and  of  religion,  but  also  the  relation  in  which  he 
stands  to  the  ideal  cause,  process,  and  end  of  human  life, 
individual  and  collective. 

iii.  The  historical  person  of  the  Founder  determines  the 
outward  character  of  the  religion,  its  institutions  and  civil 
form,  the  means  it  uses  to  fulfil  and  develop  its  function  as 
a  factor  of  social  order  and  ethical  amelioration  as  well  as  to 
cultivate  the  persons  it  enlists  and  commands  and  relates 
to  the  Ktcrnal.  The  order  of  Buddha  and  the  State  of 
Mohammed  are  their  personal  creations. 

iv.  The  ideal  significance  of  His  person  determines  the 
permanent  and  essential  value  of  the  Founder  to  man  and 
religion.  For  as  the  person  is  conceived  to  be  supreme  in 
history,  in  mind,  and  in  the  universe  of  actual  being,  he  is 
the  symbol  of  all  that  the  universe  is  on  its  most  real  yet 
mysterious  side  :  the  side  it  turns  to  man  as  he  seeks  to 


288   REVELATION  AND  THE  FOUNDER 

know  why  he  is  and  for  what  end.  The  theology  of  the 
person  becomes  then  the  religion's  philosophy  of  nature  and 
man,  of  mind  and  history. 

v.  If  the  Founder  is  to  be  known,  he  must  never  cease 
to  speak  ;  if  he  is  to  be  a  universal  authority,  his  mind  must 
never  taste  death,  but  be  so  immortalized  as  to  be  always 
and  everywhere  accessible  to  those  who  would  inquire  of 
him.  This  explains  the  need  and  defines  the  function  of 
revelation  as  it  exists  in  a  personal  religion  ;  it  turns  the 
moment  of  the  Founder's  historical  being  into  an  everlasting 
now.  To  be  complete  the  revelation  must  enable  us  to 
know  the  Founder,  his  personal  history,  what  manner  of 
man  he  was,  how  he  took  himself  and  caused  himself  to 
be  taken,  what  he  taught  and  what  men  thought  concerning 
him,  what  he  intended,  achieved  and  suffered.  In  other 
words,  it  must  enable  us  to  judge  not  only  as  to  the 
Founder's  person  and  history,  but  as  to  the  entire  process 
that  created  the  religion.  It  is  only  thus  that  we  can 
discover  what  it  really  is,  and  conceive  it  according  to  its 
place  and  worth  and  work  in  universal  history. 


BOOK    II 

THE    PERSON   OF    CHRIST  AND    THE    MAKING   OF   THE 
CHRISTIAN    RELIGION 

IN  THREE  PARTS 
I.  THE  FOUNDER  AS  AN  HISTORICAL  PERSON;  OR  JESUS  AS  CON- 

CKIVKI)    AND    REPRESENTED    IN   THE    EVANGELICAL    HlSTORV 

II.  THE  INTERPRETATION  OF  THE  FOUNDER  ;  OR  THE  CREATION 
OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  RELIGION  THROUGH  THE  APOSTOLICAL 
CONSTRUCTION  OF  JESUS  AS  THE  CHRIST 

III.  THE  COMPARISON  OF  THE  ELEMENTS  AND  IDEAS   IN   THIS  IN- 
TERPRETATION   WITH     THOSE    MOST    CONSTITUTIVE    IN    THE 

IDEAL  OF    RELIGION  AS  CONSERVED  AND   EXEMPLIFIED   IN 
THE  HISTORICAL  RELIGIONS 


ITdi/ra  vfj.S>v  ecrriV,  vp.fls  8e  Xpioroi),   Xpicrror  Se   0eot). 

—PAUL,  I   Cor.  iii.  23. 

Humanum  genus  bene  se  habet  et  optime,  quando  secundum  quod 
potest  Deo  adsimilatur.  Sed  genus  humanum  maxime  Deo  adsimilatur 
quando  maxime  est  unum  ;  vera  enim  ratio  unius  in  solo  illo  est. — DANTE, 
De  Monarchic*,  I.  cap.  viii. 

Igitur,  qui  innocentiam  colit,  Domino  supplicat  ;  qui  justitiam,  Deo 
libat ;  qui  fraudibus  abstinet,  propitiat  Deum  ;  qui  hominem  periculo 
surripit,  optimam  victimam  caedit.  Haec  nostra  sacrificia,  haec  Dei  sacra 
sunt ;  sic  apud  nos  religiosior  est  ille  qui  justior. — M.  MlNUCIUS  FELIX, 
Octavius,  cap.  xxxii. 

Alle  Erscheinungen  des  religiosen  Lebens  auf  Erden,  auch  das 
Christenthum,  sind  nur  in  der  Idee  der  Religion  wissenschaftlich  zu  ver- 
stehen.  zu  wiirdigen,  und  der  Idee  gemass,  nach  ihrem  Musterbegriffe 
und  Musterbilde,  reiner,  hoher,  und  lebenreicher  auszubilden. — K.  C.  F. 
KRAUSE,  Die  absolute  Religionsphilosophie,  p.  1013. 

Eine  nur  ist  sie  fur  alle,  doch  stehet  sie  jeder  verschieden, 
Dass  es  Eines  doch  bleibt,  macht  das  Verschiedene  wahr. 

An  die  alttestamentliche  Religion  hat  das  Christenthum  angekniipft 
und  sich  als  seinen  Schluss,  als  seine  Erfullung  und  Vollendung  darge- 
stellt,  dem  Judenthum  aber  ist  es  entgegengetreteh.  Und  das  Christen- 
thum ist  nur  eine  neue  und  letzte  Stufe  dieser  selben  Offenbarungs- 
religion  :  auf  ihr  ist  der  Heilige  selbst  erschienen,  und  das  Ideal,  welches 
die  alttestamentliche  Stufe  im  Volke  Israel  vergeblich  darzustellen 
suchte,  eine  heilige  Gemeinde,  ein  Reich  Gottes  auf  Erden  vvird  nun 
verwirklicht  durch  die,  welche  mit  ihm  in  die  Gemeinschaft  des 
Glaubens  treten  und  die  Kraft  der  Heiligung  aus  ihm  ziehen.— A.  DiLL- 
MANN,  Ursprung  der  A Ittestamentlichen  Religion,  1865,  p.  35. 

Alles  hat  seine  Zeit, 

Der  Herr  der  Zeit  ist  Colt, 

Der  Zeiten  Wendepunkt  Christus, 

Der  rechte  Zeitgeist  der  heilige  Geist. 


290 


INTRODUCTORY 

RECAPITULATION   AND   STATEMENT   OF   THE   NEW 
QUESTION 

§  I.     The  Old  Problem 

THE  principles  elucidated  in  the  past  discussions  have 
now  to  be  applied  to  a  problem  which  is  all  the  more 
philosophical  that  it  is  so  historical  and  particular,  viz.,  the 
interpretation  of  the  relation  between  the  Founder  of  the 
Christian  religion  and  the  religion  He  founded.  What  is 
involved  in  this  new  discussion  may  become  more  obvious 
if  we  resume  the  successive  stages  of  the  argument  which 
has  led  up  to  it. 

i.  The  argument  started  with  an  examination  into  what  is 
meant  by  the  idea  of  Nature,  and  whether  it  can  be  used  to 
deny  the  being  and  action  of  a  supernatural  Reason.  What 
may  be  termed  the  primary  premiss  may  be  stated  either 
thus  : — the  interpreter  of  nature  is  also  its  interpretation  ;  or 
thus: — the  problem  of  individual  is  one  with  that  of  collective 
experience.  The  fact  of  knowledge  was  found  to  imply  a 
transcendental  factor  which  justified  the  inference  as  to  the 
ultimate  and  causal  reality  of  thought.  From  the  correlation 
of  the  intellect  and  the  intelligible,  or  of  rational  man  and  an 
interpretable  universe,  it  was  argued  that  they  must  have 
had  as  their  common  ground  a  creative  Intelligence,  who 
had  used  the  visual  language  we  call  nature  to  speak  to  the 
incarnate  reason  we  call  man. 

ii.  This  primary  premiss  was  next  expanded  into  the 
position  that  man  was  not  simply  a  being  who  knew,  but  a 


292         GOD   AS    RESPONSIBLE    FOR    MAN 

person  who  acted,  that  his  actions  could  be  qualitatively 
distinguished,  that  he  felt  the  obligation  and  possessed  the 
power  to  choose  the  good  and  avoid  the  evil  ;  and  that  as 
the  intellect  implied  an  intelligible,  so  man  as  a  moral  person 
involved  a  moral  universe,  while  the  two  in  their  concord- 
ance and  concurrence  justified  the  belief  in  a  moral  order. 
According  to  the  first  argument  God  was  to  be  interpreted 
in  the  terms  of  the  reason ;  according  to  the  second,  in  the 
terms  of  moral  sovereignty  or  of  conscience  and  will ;  while 
both  arguments  conducted  to  the  conclusion  that  the  rela- 
tions between  the  Creator  and  the  creature  must  be  active, 
continuous  and  spiritual. 

iii.  The  third  step  in  the  argument  was  a  discussion  of  the 
gravest  of  all  the  facts  which  a  believer  in  moral  order  can 
face — the  fact  of  evil.  The  rational  and  moral  creature  had 
behaved  as  an  imperfect  and  inexperienced  being,  which  he 
was,  and  not  as  a  perfect  and  eternal  being,  which  he  was 
not ;  and  so  his  earliest  attempts  at  using  his  freedom  had 
been  by  the  indulgence  of  self-will,  whence  had  come  evil 
and  the  suffering  which  disciplined.  But  while  evil  owed  its 
being  to  man,  it  had  only  increased  what  was  termed  the 
responsibility  of  God  ;  in  other  words,  it  was  impossible  to 
conceive  that  infinite  goodness  would  cease  to  seek  to  help 
and  heal  the  creature  whose  being  it  had  willed,  because  that 
creature  had  been  so  misguided  as  to  choose  the  evil  rather 
than  the  good  ;  and  if  divine  action  on  behalf  of  man  con- 
tinued, how  better  could  it  be  described  than  as  continuous 
creation  ? 

iv.  The  argument  then  moved  forward  from  nature  and 
man  in  the  abstract  to  nature  and  man  in  the  concrete,  living 
together,  acting  and  interacting  on  each  other,  nature  as 
physical  environment,  man  as  the  moral  and  social  organism 
we  speak  of  now  as  society  and  now  as  state.  This  carried  us 
into  the  field  of  history,  and  it  was  contended  that  the  ideas 
of  law  and  progress  which  had  made  nature  interpretable  and 


CONTINUES    HIS    CREATIVE   ACTIVITY     293 

had  organized  its  interpretation  into  the  collective  physical 
scic-nces,  must  be  valid  here  also,  or  they  could  have  no 
validity  anywhere.  But  though  we  were  bound  to  conceive 
order  and  unity,  co-ordinated  movement  and  change  in  the 
common  life  of  man  as  in  universal  nature,  yet  they  must  be 
conceived  as  operative  under  appropriate  forms,  i.e.  forms 
proper  not  to  physical  energies,  but  to  thought,  to  reasons, 
emotions,  consciences,  wills,  or  simply  to  man  and  mankind. 
But  what  history  exhibits  is  a  creative  process  rather  incom- 
plete than  completed.  Biology  has  to  construct  the  succes- 
sion and  filiation  of  organic  forms  by  an  act  of  retrospective 
imagination  ;  but  history,  though  it  has  to  deal  with  an 
immeasurable  past,  yet  can  study  the  forces  that  make  for 
evolution,  producing  the  moral,  the  social,  and  the  religious 
forms  of  the  present.  We  may  then  distinguish  the  two 
arenas  thus  : — in  nature  where  new  organisms  have  ceased 
to  appear,  evolution  may  be  said  to  have  accomplished  its 
work  ;  but  in  history  the  work  is  still  only  in  process,  and 
waits  final  accomplishment.  Here,  then,  is  the  field  where 
the  Creator's  continued  activity  finds  its  fitting  sphere  ;  and 
its  products  are  (i)'the  ideas  creative  of  human  progress  and 
unity,  and  (2)  the  persons  through  whom  they  come 

v.  But  the  ideas  that  do  most  to  evoke  and  to  organize  the 
humanity  latent  in  man  are  those  embodied  in  his  religions, 
and  so  here  if  anywhere  the  continued  activity  of  the  Creator 
can  be  studied.  It  is  indeed  a  mediated  activity,  conditioned 
by  the  medium  in  and  through  which  He  works.  And  so 
its  forms  had  to  be  analyzed,  viz.,  the  notion  of  religion,  its 
sources,  the  method  in  which  it  does  its  work,  the  causes  and 
conditions  which  affect  the  many  shapes  it  assumes.  In  all 
religions  men  think'  of  deity,  and  as  they  think  they  worship  ; 
and  in  all  they  believe  themselves  to  influence  him  and  to 
be  influenced  by  him.  And  the  voice  of  Nature  is  here  the 
voice  of  truth. 

vi.   From  religion  in  the  abstract  the  discussion  moved  into 


294       RELIGIONS   AND   THEIR   FOUNDERS 

the  field  of  the  concrete,  its  history ;  attempted  to  find  what 
had  made  and  kept  religions  national ;  and  what  had  impelled, 
out  of  all  the  multitude  of  local  or  tribal  religions,  only  three 
to  seek  to  transcend  the  nation  and  become  missionary. 
The  ideas  of  a  religion  were,  it  was  argued,  more  capable  of 
translation  and  diffusion  than  its  institutions,  which  tended 
as  local  and  tribal  to  hedge  off  the  people  and  to  hinder  the 
distribution  of  their  faith.  Analysis  further  showed  that  the 
national  religion  which  possessed  the  most  universal  idea — 
the  Hebrew — was  as  much  limited  as  any  by  the  usages 
which  the  fanaticism  of  the  people  jealously  guarded  and 
observed,  as  if  they  constituted  its  very  essence  ;  and  was 
therefore,  by  being  placed  under  rigorous  tribal  restrictions, 
prevented  from  realizing  its  idea.  The  emancipation  of  this 
idea,  and  its  embodiment  in  a  religion  at  once  universal  and 
missionary,  was  in  a  special  and  peculiar  sense  the  achieve- 
ment of  Jesus  Christ. 

vii.  But  if  the  Christian  religion  is  conceived  as  the  achieve- 
ment of  Jesus  Christ,  it  owes  its  existence  to  a  person,  and 
thus  falls  into  the  category  of  instituted  or  founded  religions. 
Indeed,  the  three  which  have  been  described  as  "  missionary  " 
had  all  a  personal  origin  ;  and  each  has  had  its  special  character 
or  creative  and  constitutive  idea  determined  by  the  person  who 
gave  it  being.  Hence  the  question  as  to  the  relation  between 
the  religion  and  its  founder  is  not  peculiar  to  Christianity, 
but  is  common  to  the  class  as  a  whole,  and  so  belongs  to  the 
province  of  comparative  history  and  philosophy.  Approached 
from  this  point  of  view  it  was  found  that  while  an  historical 
person  and  his  creative  acts  were  presupposed  in  the  religion, 
yet  it  could  not  in  any  real  sense  begin  to  be  without  some 
form  of  apotheosis  by  the  community.  Institution  or  creation 
was  thus  a  process  due  to  the  concurrence  of  two  distinct 
factors,  which  may  be  described  as,  respectively,  personal  and 
communal.  These  gave  to  the  founder  a  significance  at  once 
historical  o^  real,  and  intelligible  or  ideal ;  while  without  the 


QUESTIONS   TOUCHING   CHRISTIANITY     295 

first  the  religion  could  have  had  no  positive  existence,  with- 
out the  second  it  could  have  no  intellectual  value,  no  moral 
energy,  no  continuous  being  as  a  social  force  appealing  to 
the  conscience  and  the  imagination  of  man.  Hence  come 
regulative  ideas,  terms  and  standards  of  comparison  which 
we  must  not  shrink  from  applying  to  the  connexion  between 
Jesus  Christ  and  the  Christian  religion. 

§  II.      The  New  Problem 

If,  then,  we  carry  these  categories  with  us,  we  may  the 
better  appreciate  the  questions  we  have  now  to  discuss  :  How 
was  it  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  a  Jewish  peasant,  became 
the  Founder  of  the  Christian  religion  ?  Was  it  as  a  peasant 
and  as  a  Jew  ?  Did  He  create  the  religion,  or  was  He  rather 
its  creature  ?  If  He  created  it,  by  virtue  of  what  qualities 
did  He  accomplish  the  work  ?  If  it  created  Him,  by  what 
process  and  impelled  by  what  causes  did  it  produce  so 
remarkable  an  effect?  In  other  words,  How  do  His  person 
and  the  religion  stand  related  to  each  other  ?  What  does  it 
owe  to  Him  and  He  owe  to  it?  May  we  say  that  He  did 
not  so  much  found  it  as  cause  it  to  be  founded  ?  And  what 
does  this  causation  imply  concerning  His  person,  its  con- 
stituents, continuance,  functions?  If  religion  can  as  little 
be  without  worship  as  without  belief,  is  Christian  worship  a 
mere  exercise  of  the  subjective  spirit,  or  has  it  any  correlative 
objective  reality?  What  is  this  reality?  Would  the  religion 
continue  were  Christ  believed  to  be  dead,  or  conceived  as 
only  a  beautiful  soul  incarnated  in  His  own  rare  words  for 
the  admiration  and  instruction  of  mankind  ?  Can  it  be 
claimed  for  His  Person  that  as  interpreted  in  the  apostolic 
writings  it  made  an  absolute  and  ideal  religion  possible? 
And  can  anything  from  the  fields  of  philosophy  and  history 
be  said  as  to  the  warrant  or  legitimacy  of  this  claim? 

These  questions  trench  on  the  province  of  certain  con- 
nected and  cognate  studies  which  it  is  impossible  either  to 


296  THE   ANCILLARY    STUDIES 

pursue  here  or  entirely  ignore.  The  most  important  of  them 
is  the  literary  and  historical  criticism  of  the  oldest  Christian 
literature.  This  criticism  takes  the  literature  as  a  corpus  or 
body  of  scriptures  which  has  to  be  studied  and  explained 
through  its  sources,  historical  and  personal,  through  lan- 
guage and 'thought,  through  social  and  religious  movements, 
antecedent  and  contemporary  tendencies  and  events.  Once 
it  has  showed  us  how  the  literature  came  to  be,  in  what 
order  it  was  written,  at  what  date,  by  what  men,  in  obedience 
to  what  impulse,  for  what  end,  its  work  is  done, — its  problem 
is  solved.  But  our  question  is  at  once  larger  and  more  radi- 
cal. The  literature  is  to  us  the  scheme  of  a  religion  and  the 
story  of  its  founding  ;  and  as  such  it  is  even  more  organically 
connected  with  the  future  than  with  the  past.  We  have  to 
study  it  not  as  a  fact  to  be  explained,  but  as  a  factor  of 
events  which  without  it  would  be  without  any  explanation. 
What  concerns  us  is  indeed  still  history,  but  it  is  a  history 
whose  temporal  and  spatial  relations  have  been  so  widened 
as  to  become  universal  and  eternal.  What  we  seek  to  gain  is 
not  simply  the  mind  of  a  contemporary,  or  the  knowledge  of 
the  exact  conditions  which  produced  each  document  and  of 
the  world  it  reflects  ;  but  also  to  discover  the  seeds  and 
causes  of  the  ideal  world  in  which  we  dwell.  We  do  not 
cease  to  use  criticism,  for  by  determining  the  nature  and 
value  of  our  sources  it  governs  the  degree  and  the  certainty 
of  our  knowledge  ;  but  its  canons  do  not  measure  for  us  the 
religion  which  the  literature  it  handles  at  once  describes  and 
enshrines.  For  this  we  have  to  study  it  in  the  light  of  collec- 
tive religion,  or  as  it  lives  in  the  medium  of  the  human  spirit 
and  answers  to  it,  and  as  it  stands  on  the  stage  of  history, 
living  and  behaving  as  its  creative  ideas  command. 

§  III.      The  Criticism  of  the  Literature  and  the  Person 

The  literature,   as  related    to    our    subject,  falls    into   two 
main  divisions, — one,  the  Gospels,  concerned  with  the  personal 


THE    LITERATURE    AND   THE    ORIGINS    297 

history  of  Jesus  ;  the  other,  the  apostolical  writings,  including 
the  Acts,  concerned  with  the  interpretation  of  His  Person  as 
the  Christ.  The  former  show  us  what  manner  of  man  the 
Founder  of  the  religion  was  ;  the  latter  what  the  thought  of 
His  people  conceived  Him  to  be  and  what  they  accomplished 
in  His  name.  But  the  chronological  relations  of  these  divi- 
sions are  not  the  same  as  their  historical.  In  the  order  of  time 
the  person  precedes  the  interpretation  ;  but  the  books  which 
interpret  Him  are  older  than  those  that  narrate  His  personal 
history.  The  most  certainly  authentic  documents  in  the  New 
Testament,  contemporary  with  the  events  they  describe  or 
refer  to,  are  not  the  Gospels,  but  certain  Pauline  Epistles  ; 
and  of  these  the  first  must  have  been  written  about  50  A.D.,  and 
the  last  could  hardly  have  been  later  than  62.  Of  the  non- 
Pauline  Epistles  the  greatest  and  the  weightiest,  Hebrews, 
belongs  probably  to  about  the  year  70,  while  near  it  in  point 
of  date  stands  a  work  of,  possibly,  inferior  theological 
importance,  the  Apocalypse.  In  these  we  have  what  may 
be  termed  a  completed  Christology,  though  the  only  Gospel 
that  existed  in  the  year  70,  if,  indeed,  it  did  then  exist,  was 
that  of  Mark.  He  is  one  of  the  Synoptists,  the  other  t\vo, 
divided  from  Mark  by  periods,  probably,  of  from  ten  to 
fifteen  years,  being  Matthew  and  Luke,  who  use  the  same 
material  and  present,  with  significant  differences,  the  same 
view  of  the  Person  and  His  History.  Now,  it  may  seem  a 
strange  inversion  of  the  natural  order,  and  certain  to  involve 
perversions  of  fact,  that  we  should  have  had  the  speculative 
construction  before  the  actual  and  personal  history  ;  but  it 
can  only  so  seem  to  a  hurried  and  inconsequent  thinker. 
For 

i.  The  literature  here  follows  the  strict  order  of  nature,  or 
the  laws  of  exact  thought.  There  was  at  first  no  question 
as  to  the  history  of  Jesus,  His  birth,  life,  doctrine,  sufferings, 
death  ;  but  there  was  from  the  very  outset  the  sharpest  dif- 
ferences as  to  what  He  was,  why  He  was,  and  what  He  did. 


298         THE   GOSPELS    IN   THE   EPISTLES 

And  this  was  a  question  that  had  to  be  settled  in  order  that 
His  Society  should  know  whether  it  was  to  die  or  to  live. 

ii.  The  extraordinary  activity  of  apostolical  thought  con- 
cerning the  Person  did  not  imply  neglect  of  the  history  ;  on 
the  contrary,  it  involved  continual  occupation  with  it.  So 
much,  indeed,  is  this  the  case  that  it  is  quite  impossible  to 
understand  the  Epistles  without  the  Gospels ;  the  logic  of 
the  former  assumes  at  every  point  the  history  of  the  latter. 
Were  a  scholar  unacquainted  with  the  Gospels  to  read  the 
Pauline  writings,  with  their  references  to  the  birth,  descent, 
character,  love,  righteousness,  grace,  cross,  death,  and  resur- 
rection of  Christ,  he  would  find  them  utterly  unintelligible,  not 
only  because  he  did  not  know  who  this  Christ  was,  where  He 
had  lived,  what  He  had  been  and  claimed  to  be,  but  also  be- 
cause the  very  man  who  writes  and  the  persons  he  writes  to, 
with  their  special  ideas,  questions,  and  arguments,  would  be 
inexplicable  without  Him.  And  if  the  Gospels  are  so  neces- 
sary to  the  reader  of  the  Epistles,  can  the  history  they  record 
have  been  less  necessary  to  their  writer  ?  And  if  so  con- 
strued, do  the  Epistles  not  authenticate  the  history  they 
assume,  though  not  perhaps  the  books  that  describe  it  in  the 
form  in  which  they  have  come  down  to  us  ? 

iii.  Criticism  has  enabled  us  to  analyze  the  Synoptic  Gos- 
pels, to  discover  the  documents  that  underlie  them,  the  use 
they  have  made  of  common  sources,  narrative  and  didactic, 
their  relation  to  each  other,  and  their  respective  modes  of 
dealing  with  the  history  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  login,  the 
notes  or  memoranda  of  addresses,  parables,  or  conversations 
on  the  other.  These  things  indicate  the  method  of  the  his- 
torian :  the  men  do  not  invent  their  material,  but  find,  arrange, 
and  set  it  in  order.  And  here  as  the  Gospels  are  needed  to 
illuminate  the  Epistles,  the  Epistles  are  needed  to  supplement 
the  Gospels  and  bring  out  their  distinctive  features.  It  is  re- 
markable, indeed,  how  distinct  their  provinces  are,  how  little 
of  the  oral  or  written  material  which  the  evangelists  employ 


CONTEMPORARY  HISTORY  IN  THE  GOSPELS  299 

finds  its  way  into  the  Epistles,  and  how  few  of  the  distinctive 
formulae  or  the  special  terms  and  problems  which  exercise 
the  earlier  apostolical  writers  are  incorporated  with  the  Gos- 
pels. And  there  is  another  and  parallel  fact  to  be  explained. 
In  70  A.D.  Jerusalem  fell  and  with  it  the  Jewish  State.  How- 
ever much  it  signified  to  the  Jew,  it  signified  to  the  Christian 
no  less.  It  meant  that  the  city  that  had  refused  to  hear,  and 
cast  out,  mocked  and  crucified  the  Christ,  had  perished  in  its 
pride,  that  God  had  avenged  its  guilt  and  vindicated  His 
innocence.  It  meant  that  the  home  of  the  influences  most 
hostile  to  the  Church  had  been  razed  to  the  ground.  Yet  in 
the  two  later  Synoptic  Gospels  the  event  leaves  hardly  a 
trace  on  the  history.  It  may  be  involved  in  certain  texts  or 
references  in  the  apocalyptic  addresses,  but  these  can  be 
removed  without  seriously  affecting  the  narrative.  The  effect 
on  contemporary  Judaism  we  can  study  in  the  pages  of 
Josephus  ;  or,  to  cite  a  parallel  case,  we  can  see  in  Augus- 
tine's De  Cii'itate  Dei  the  influence  which  the  fall  of  Rome 
exercised  on  both  Christian  and  pagan  thought.  Yet  the 
fall  of  Rome  stood  in  no  such  obvious  tragic  relation  to  the 
church  of  Christ  as  did  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  to  His  death  ; 
and  had  no  such  evident  and  immediate  significance  for  the  reli- 
gion. That  the  Gospels  were  so  little  affected  in  texture  and 
in  matter  by  inner  movements  and  outer  events,  is  a  point 
which  students  of  cognate  and  contemporary  influences  in 
literature  will  be  able  to  appreciate. 

iv.  History  does  not  lose  but  gain  in  accuracy  and  truth  by 
being  mediately  rather  than  immediately  written.  The  last 
and  most  trustworthy  historian  is  not  the  evewitness,  but  the 
man  who  can  question  him,  and  who  can  through  the  issue 
read  character,  action,  and  event  with  greater  intelligence 
than  he.  The  most  accurate  and  informing  history  is  not  the 
diary,  but  the  discourse  of  the  writer  who  sees  not  simply  the 
salient  feature  of  each  person  or  occurrence,  but  sees  also  each 
thing  as  it  is  and  all  the  things  together.  And  when  we  come 


300  THE    EYEWITNESS    AND   THE    HISTORIAN 

to  study  the  Gospels  together,  we  see  how  much  time  has 
done  for  the  perspective  which  gives  to  each  figure  in  the 
scene  its  due  place  and  proportion.  The  sense  of  the  causa- 
tion and  connexion  of  events  has  grown  in  the  Evangelists. 
Mark  is  more  of  the  simple  narrator  than  either  of  the  other 
two  ;  he  tells  what  he  has  heard  rather  than  what  he  has 
seen,  writes,  as  Peter  was  wont  to  speak,  the  simple  yet  pic- 
turesque words  which  describe  Jesus  "  by  the  sea  of  Galilee,"  l 
calling  Peter  and  Andrew,  "  James  the  son  of  Zebedee,  and 
John  his  brother,"  casting  "  the  unclean  spirit  "  out  of  the  man, 
healing  "  Simon's  wife's  mother,  who  lay  sick  of  a  fever," 
sitting  "  at  even,  when  the  sun  did  set,"  with  the  sick  and  the 
possessed  of  devils  around  Him  "  and  all  the  city  gathered  at 
the  door."  This  is  the  thing  an  eyewitness,  or  the  man  who 
reports  an  eyewitness,  can  do,  and  Mark  does  it  perfectly. 
His  pen  realizes  the  scene,  and  we  see  Jesus  as  He  was,  and 
as  only  a  pen  which  followed  the  tongue  of  a  speaker  de- 
scribing experiences  too  vivid  to  be  forgotten,  can  show  Him. 
With  Matthew  and  Luke  the  atmosphere  is  different ;  Jesus 
is  more  an  historical  figure  with  roots  in  the  past  and  relations 
in  the  present,  and  less  a  person  loved  for  His  own  sake  and 
with  His  reason  in  Himself.  The  antitheses  are  more  sharply 
conceived  ;  in  Matthew  he  fulfils  the  law  and  opposes  the 
Pharisees,  in  Luke  He  befriends  the  poor,  the  publican,  and 
the  sinner  ;  and  in  both  His  world  is,  whether  in  retrospect 
or  prospect,  as  large  as  the  history  of  man. 

v.  And  here  we  may  observe  how  the  enlarged  and  enriched 
thought  of  the  apostolical  writings  has  affected  the  atmo- 
sphere and  the  setting  as  distinguished  from  the  matter  of  the 
Gospels.  The  author  of  Matthew  has  affinities  with  the  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews,  though  his  affinities  are  those  of  a  Pales- 
tinian rather  than  a  Roman  or  Alexandrian  Jew  ;  but  Luke's 
are  more  Pauline.  Matthew,  like  Hebrews,  reads  the  New 
La\v  through  the  old,  though  his  symbolism  is  more  historical 
1  Mark  i.  16-34. 


THE    HISTORIAN    AS    AN    INTERPRETER    301 

than  institutional,  more  in  things  and  incidents  than  in  ideas 
and  forms.  Hence  his  genealogy  begins  with  Abraham,  and 
comes  down  through  David  to  Joseph  the  husband  of  Mary.1 
The  child  is  named  Jesus,  for  "  He  shall  save  His  people  from 
their  sins."2  He  "is  born  King  of  the  Jews"3  and  every 
event  of  His  childhood  fulfils  a  prophecy.4  And  as  then,  so 
throughout.  He  begins  His  ministry  like  a  new  Moses 
proclaiming  on  the  Mount  a  law  which  speaks  in  beatitudes 
rather  than  in  curses,5  yet  He  comes  to  fulfil  the  old  and  not 
to  destroy  it.6  He  forbids  His  disciples  to  go  into  the  way  of 
the  Gentiles,  for  His  mission  is  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house 
of  Israel,7  and  His  message  tells  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
has  come.8  Yet  this  particularism  is  only  the  prelude  to  a 
richer  universalism.  For  many  are  to  come  from  the  east  and 
the  west  and  sit  down  with  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,11  while  the  sons  of  the  kingdom  are  cast 
forth  into  outer  darkness;  and  His  final  commission  is  to  make 
disciples  of  all  nations.10  Luke  is  more  distinctly  Hellenistic, 
but  his  Hellenism  is  that  of  the  Greek  rather  than  of  the 
Jew.  He  interprets  Jesus  and  His  history  through  the  Pauline 
idea  of  the  Second  Adam,  and  construes  Him  throughout  in 
universal  terms.  His  genealogy  runs  back  to  Adam,  "the 
Son  of  God."  !  lie  is  born  as  it  were  a  citizen  of  the  Roman 
Empire.1'  The  message  of  His  birth  promises  glory  to  God 
in  the  highest,  and  peace  to  man  on  earth.13  He  begins  His 
ministry  by  reading  a  prophecy  which  identifies  Him  with 
the  Servant  of  God  and  the  cause  of  the  poor  and  the 
oppressed.14  And  the  great  parables  peculiar  to  Luke  re- 
peat and  emphasize  these  ideas.  He  impersonates  in  the 
Good  Samaritan  Christ's  everlasting  rebuke  to  the  vanity  and 

1   M;itt.  i.  I-  16.  *  i.  2  i.  8  ii.  2. 

4  i.  22;   ii.  5,  15,  17,  23.  5  v.  3    12.  6  v.  17. 

7  *•  5-  6-  *  »v.  17  :  x.  7  ;  xiii.  24,  31,  33,  44,  45,  47 

9  viii.  it,    12  ;  cf.   xxi.   43.  xxii.  1-14.  10  xxviii.  19. 

11   Luke  iii.  38.  '*  ii.  i,  2.  1:i  ii.  14.  u   iv.  18 


302  LUKE'S    DISTINCTIVE    MESSAGE 

heartlessness  of  the  priest  and  the  Levite.1  He  leaves  the 
Pharisee  speaking  his  own  shame  in  the  temple,  while  He 
sends  the  publican  home  justified.2  He  bids  the  everlasting 
Fatherhood  in  the  man  who  had  two  sons,  both  graceless, 
yet  both  sons  still,  rebuke  the  caste  of  the  scribe  and  the 
isolation  of  the  sectary.3  And  in  the  story  of  the  rich  man 
and  Lazarus  he  gives  dignity  to  poverty  and  makes  all 
wealth  which  is  proud  of  itself  as  mere  wealth  feel  vacant 
and  vain.4  The  same  ideas  are  embodied  and  made  ar- 
ticulate in  such  incidents,  also  distinctive  of  Luke,  as  the 
woman  of  the  city,  a  sinner,  in  the  house  of  Simon  the 
Pharisee,  with  its  lesson  pointed  by  the  appended  parable  ; 5 
the  conversion  of  the  chief  publican,  Zacchaeus,6  and  the 
scene  in  the  house  of  the  sisters  Martha  and  Mary.7  These 
are  all  though  peculiar  to  Luke,  yet  authentic  and  charac- 
teristic. Mark  would  hardly  have  seen  their  significance, 
nor  would  the  original  witness  whose  version  he  repeats. 
Matthew  had  no  eye  for  them,  because  they  did  not  help 
to  unfold  his  leading  idea.  But  Luke,  with  a  finer  imagina- 
tion, a  more  skilful  pen  and  a  wider  outlook  than  either, 
preserved  acts  and  words  whose  loss  would  have  made  us 
appreciably  poorer ;  yet  because  they  are  so  germane  to  the 
mind  and  purpose  of  the  historian,  they  but  add  an  illus- 
tration to  the  point,  that  the  more  a  man  brings  to  a  history 
the  more  he  can  find  in  it,  and  also  the  better  help  us  to  find 
more  there. 

§   IV.     The   Religion    and  tJie   Literature 

I.  The  criticism  of  the  literature  may,  then,  be  necessary  to 
the  discussion  of  our  problem,  but  it  is  not  by  itself  sufficient 
for  its  solution.  On  the  contrary,  it  may  be  so  pursued  as  to 
make  any  reasonable  solution  impossible.  Thus  a  recent  critic 
has  found  in  the  synoptists  only  five  "  absolutely  credible  pas- 

1  x.  25-57.         2  xviii.  9-14.          8  xv.  11-32.         4  xvi.  14,  19,  31. 
5  vii.  36-50.  "  xix.  2-10.  7  x.  38-42. 


3°3 

sages  about  Jesus  in  general."  l  These  are  His  refusal  to  be 
called  "good,"  for  "no  one  is  good  save  God  only"2;  the  blas- 
phemy against  the  Son  of  Man,  which  "  shall  be  forgiven"3; 
His  relation  to  His  kinsfolk  when  they  held  Him  to  be  beside 
Himself4  ;  the  profession  of  ignorance  as  to  the  day  and  the 
hour  which  were  known  only  of  the  Father5  ;  and  the  cry  of 
desertion  on  the  cross.6  To  these  he  adds  four  passages  "  on 
the  miracles  of  Jesus."  The  refusal  to  work  a  sign  7 ;  the 
inability  because  of  unbelief  to  do  any  mighty  work  at 
Nazareth8;  the  warning  of  the  disciples  to  "beware  of  the 
leaven  of  the  Pharisees  and  Herod,"  9  which  is,  as  it  were,  the 
title  of  a  parable  turned  into  a  miracle  ;  and  the  message  to 
the  Baptist  touching  His  miracles  10  ;  where  Jesus  is  made 
to  speak  "  not  of  the  physically  but  of  the  spiritually  blind, 
lame,  leprous,  deaf,  dead."  n  These  nine  passages  are  called 
41  the  foundation-pillars  for  a  truly  scientific  life  of  Jesus." 
But  what  claim  have  they  to  be  regarded  as  a  solid  basis  for 
any  "  scientific  life  "  which  must  explain  not  only  the  life  that 
ended  on  the  Cross,  but  also  the  work  accomplished  by  the 
Crucified  in  and  for  mankind?  They  are  mainly  negative;  and 
it  is  only  when  viewed  through  a  larger  context  and  an  atmo- 
sphere which  they  themselves  do  not  create,  that  the}'  gain  any 
positive  .significance  whatever.  They  show  what  Jesus  was 
not,  what  He  could  not  know  or  do,  they  do  not  show  what 
He  was  or  did.  Yet  of  all  real  things  the  most  positively 
real,  the  most  efficient  and  continuous  in  its  recreative  action, 
is  His  Person  ;  and  to  attempt  to  explain  it  by  nine  negatives, 
made  the  more  absolute  by  appearing  in  one  or  two  cases  in 
a  positive  form,  is  only  to  resolve  it  into  a  more  darksome 

1  Schmiedel,  Encycl.  Bibl.,  pp.  1881-1883.  *  Mark  x.  17,  iS. 

•  Matt.  xii.  31,  32.  4  Mark  iii.  21. 

5  Mark  xiii.  32.  6   Mark  xv.  34  ;     Matt,  xxvii.  46. 

7  Mark  viii.    12  ;     Matt.    xii.  39;  cf.  xvi.  4;   Luke  xi.  29. 

8  Mark  vi.  5,  6  ;  cf.  Matt.  xv.  38.         9   Mark  viii.  14-18  ;  cf.  Matt.  xvi.  6, 
10  Matt.  xi.  5  ;   Luke  vii.  22.  "  Encycl.  Bibl.,  1883. 


304  THE  TEACHER  A  SOVEREIGN  PERSONALITY 

mystery  than  before.  And  this  is  only  a  type  of  the  illusion 
that  mistakes  critical  ingenuity  for  historical  science.  Another 
and  more  common  is  that  which  seeks  in  the  words  of  Jesus 
the  entire  truth  as  to  Himself  and  His  mission.  Truth  is 
there,  but  truth  is  conditioned  by  the  medium  it  employs  and 
the  minds  that  hear  it  as  well  as  by  the  mind  that  speaks  it. 
We  cannot  indeed  know  too  much  of  His  mind  and  thought ; 
but,  let  us  frankly  say  it,  it  is  not  here  that  His  sole  pre- 
eminence or  our  main  problem  lies.  His  work  and  mean- 
ing as  a  religious  Teacher  belongs  to  exegesis  and  compara- 
tive literary  criticism  ;  but  our  discussion  is  philosophical 
and  historical  as  well  as  theological,  for  it  relates  to  the 
position  and  function  of  Christ  as  a  sovereign  personality  in 
religion.  As  a  teacher  there  are  many  men  in  many  lands 
and  times  with  whom  He  may  be  compared  ;  but  as  a  creative 
and  sovereign  personality  there  are  in  the  whole  of  history 
only  two  or  three,  if  indeed  there  are  so  many,  with  any 
claim  to  stand  by  His  side.  As  a  Teacher  He  is  a  natural 
person,  with  historical  antecedents,  a  social  environment,  a 
religious  ancestry,  and  a  position  honourable  but  not  unique 
amid  the  great  masters  of  mind  ;  but  as  a  sovereign  per- 
sonality He  is  a  new  Being,  without  father,  or  mother,  or 
genealogy,  separate,  supreme,  creating  by  His  very  ap- 
pearing a  new  spiritual  type  or  order.  As  a  Teacher  we 
can  easily  conceive  Him  as  a  Jew  and  a  peasant,  the  lineal 
descendant  of  the  prophets  and  near  of  kin  to  the  rabbis  of 
Israel  ;  but  there  is  no  harder  intellectual  task  than  to  relate 
the  sovereign  personality  to  the  Jewish  peasant,  his  ante- 
cedents and  environment.  But  this  correlation  is  the  very 
thing  which  must  be  attempted  if  all  the  phenomena  are  to 
be  explained  ;  for  if  anything  is  certain,  it  is  this : — the 
teaching  of  Jesus,  however  its  qualities  may  be  described  or 
appraised,  can  never  by  itself  explain  the  power  of  Christ, 
the  reign,  the  diffusion,  the  continuance,  and  the  achievements 
of  the  Christian  religion.  And  these  are  the  things  which 


NOT   JESUS    BUT   CHRIST  305 

stand  in  need  of  explanation  ;  not  simply  what  Jesus  thought 
and  why  He  thought  it,  but  why  men  came  so  to  think  con- 
cerning Him  as  to  create  the  religion  which  bears  His  name. 
Can  the  religion  be  without  the  idea  of  the  Christ  which 
made  it  ?  And  was  this  idea  a  mythical  creation,  a  mystic 
dream,  an  ignorant  superstition,  the  inference  of  an  imperious 
but  illiterate  logic?  Or  if  not,  what  was  it? 

2.  There  are,  then,  distinctions  both  of  issue  and  of  funda- 
mental principle  between  our  problem  and  the  questions  raised 
by  the  literary  and  historical  criticisms  of  the  New  Testament. 
These  may  be  said  to  move  within  a  special  period  and  to 
be  concerned  with  its  literature  and  its  contemporary  history. 
They  have  for  their  aim  to  show  us  what  manner  of  person 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  was,  whence  He  had  come,  how  and  under 
what  influences  He  had  been  formed,  how  He  lived,  behaved, 
thought,  spoke  ;  how  He  was  handled,  spoken  to,  judged  ; 
what  character  He  realized,  what  fate  He  encountered, 
what  evil  He  suffered.  But  in  all  this  they  enquire  simply 
concerning  an  empirical  person,  whom  they  look  at  from  the 
standpoint  of  empirical  history.  In  the  strict  sense  Jesus 
did  not  so  much  create  the  Christian  religion  as  cause  it  to 
be  created.  When  He  died,  the  creative  process  had  only 
begun.  Though  He  had  so  exemplified  the  spirit  and  char- 
acter of  the  religion  as  to  be  entitled  to  the  name  of  the 
first  Christian,  yet  it  is  one  thing  to  embody  an  ideal  and 
another  to  constitute  the  faith  which  is  to  secure  its  embodi- 
ment. What  the  men  who  had  followed  Him  believed  Him 
to  have  accomplished,  is  written  in  their  history.  They  did 
not  mean  to  cease  to  be  Jews  ;  their  discipleship  did  not 
divorce  them  from  their  ancestral  worship,  its  customs,  its 
sacred  places  and  seasons.  They  frequented  the  temple, 
observed  the  Jewish  hours  of  prayer,  the  regulations  as  to 
meats,  circumcision,  purification,  sacrifices  even; i  and  seemed 

1  Acts  of  Apostles  ii.  46  ;  iii.  I  ;  v.  42  ;  x.  14  ;  xv.  5  ;  xxi.  26. 
P.C.K.  20 


306      THE    PERSON,    BOOK,   AND   RELIGION 

indeed  to  contemplate  nothing  more  than  to  add  another  to 
the  many  sects  which  had  made  themselves  at  home  in 
Judaism.  What  changed  their  outlook  and  action  was  the 
interpretation  of  Christ's  person  ;  and  it  was  by  something 
more  divine  than  a  sure  instinct  that  it  was  made  to  occupy 
a  larger  space  in  the  New  Testament  than  even  the  words 
of  Jesus.  By  the  time  the  Gospels  came  to  be  written  the 
religion  had  become  a  reality,  the  creative  process  was  well 
advanced,  if  not  completed.  And  what  gives  to  the  Gospels 
their  peculiar  significance  is  that  they  are  Lives  of  Jesus  by 
men  who  believed  that  Christ  had  created  Christianity.  The 
empirical  person  is,  though  without  losing  His  historical  en- 
vironment, yet  transfigured  into  a  transcendental  personality. 
The  natural  is  neither  abolished  nor  depreciated,  but  it  is 
read  in  terms  of  the  supernatural.  The  struggle  of  the 
modern  spirit  is  the  exact  converse  of  this ;  it  is  to  get 
behind  the  faith  of  the  Evangelists,  and  read  the  history  they 
wrote  with  the  vision  they  had  before  their  eyes  were  opened. 
Yet  there  is  a  history  which  the  book  has  made  as  well  as  a 
history  which  it  records  ;  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  be  the 
note  of  the  historical  spirit  to  take  a  book  out  of  the  history 
it  has  made  and  to  study  it  as  if  all  its  significance  lay  in  the 
history  that  made  it.  For  it  is  the  faith  which  the  book 
embodies  more  than  the  facts  it  states,  that  has  placed  upon 
its  brow  the  crown  of  an  illuminative  history.  Only  as  we 
read  it  in  this  faith  can  we  know  it  as  a  book  of  religion,  and 
it  is  as  such  a  book  that  we  here  seek  to  know  it.  We  do 
not,  indeed,  forget  that  the  book  has  a  natural  history  of 
its  own,  according  to  which  it  must,  like  any  other  piece 
of  literature,  be  rationally  judged ;  all  we  here  desire  to 
emphasize  is  the  fact  that  the  very  process  which  produced 
it  created  a  religion,  and  the  book  is  not  justly  or  even 
critically  studied  if  this  double  process  is  forgotten. 


ARE  THEY   NATURAL  OR  SUPERNATURAL?  307 

§  V.      The  Founder  and  the  Religion 

I.  The  point  of  view  here  occupied  does  not  seem  to  us 
either  unscientific  or  uncritical  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  the 
standpoint  to  which  philosophy  has  driven  us.  We  have 
already  examined  some  of  the  assumptions  which  underlie 
the  modern  belief  in  the  inviolability  of  natural  law,1  but  with 
us  it  is  a  fixed  principle  that  violation  of  law,  properly  so 
called,  is  a  thing1  impossible  to  God.  The  distinction  between 
the  natural  and  the  supernatural,  as  it  meets  us  in  the  field 
of  nature,  we  have  also  considered  ;  2  but  now  we  must  review 
it  as  it  confronts  us  in  the  field  of  history.  The  terms, 
indeed,  as  used  here  denote  no  true  antithesis,  but  express 
ideas  that  are  rather  complementary  than  opposed.  The 
supernatural  is  not  identical  with  the  extraordinary,  the 
abnormal,  or  the  miraculous  ;  nor  is  the  natural  synonymous 
with  the  regular,  the  orderly,  or  the  uniform.  Each  may  be 
said  to  be  the  other  under  a  different  or  changed  aspect. 
The  supernatural  is  the  ideal,  the  universal,  the  causal  exist- 
ence, the  permanent  reality,  or  however  we  may  choose  to 
name  it,  which  binds  nature  and  man  together,  and  determines 
the  tendencies  that  reign  in  history,  as  well  as  the  ideas  that 
govern  men.  The  natural  is  the  apparent,  the  phenomenal, 
the  unit  in  its  isolation  and  distinctness,  the  thing  in  its 
separateness  as  opposed  to  the  organism  which  is  a  living 
whole.  Hence  the  natural  by  itself,  if  by  itself  it  can  be 
conceived,  is  uniform,  therefore  unprogrcssive  and  uncreative  ; 
its  changes  can  be  expressed  in  the  terms  of  physical 
equivalence,  but  not  of  moral  motive  or  spiritual  impulse 
But  when  it  becomes  the  visible  image  of  the  supernatural, 
the  body  to  its  soul,  it  grows  creative,  progressive,  ceases  to 
be  uniform,  and  becomes  as  varied  yet  as  orderly  as  a  move- 
ment of  the  reason.  And  this  relationship  is  most  perfectly 
realized  in  history,  for  here  the  form  the  supernatural  assumes 

1  Ante,  pp.  23  ff.  *  Ante,  p.  56. 


308         THE    PERSON    AND   THE    HISTORY 

is  the  personal,  and  the  person  is  by  nature  at  once  empirica* 
and  transcendental.  As  empirical  the  person  is  a  unit  ;  as 
transcendental  he  belongs  to  a  whole,  and  thinks  in  the  terms 
of  the  universal.  As  empirical  he  is  a  creature  of  time  and 
space,  comes  of  a  given  race,  is  born  at  a  given  time  in 
a  given  place  to  a  given  family,  inherits  a  given  past,  is 
fashioned  by  a  given  present,  and  is  a  factor  of  a  given 
future  ;  but  as  transcendental  his  affinities  are  all  v/ith  the 
eternal,  and  all  his  work  is  for  it.  Yet  these  things  are  not 
opposites,  they  are  the  integral  and  constituent  parts  of  a 
single  being  ;  but  the  factors  are  not  always  equal,  or  as  forces 
in  equilibrium.  Now  the  one  and  now  the  other  rules  ;  and 
the  more  the  higher  rules  the  lower,  the  more  is  the  person 
the  vehicle  of  the  universal,  i.e.  the  larger  is  the  part  of  God 
in  the  making  of  the  man  and  in  his  actions.  Without  the 
natural  the  supernatural  would  have  no  foothold  in  history, 
no  means  of  translating  its  ideals  into  realities,  or  of  guiding 
and  impelling  upward  the  life  of  man  ;  without  the  super- 
natural the  natural  would  constitute  no  order  and  know  no 
movement  towards  a  moral  end.  Whether,  then,  there  is 
anything  supernatural  in  a  history  is  not  a  matter  to  be 
decided  by  the  play  of  critical  formulae  on  a  literature,  nor  by 
the  study  of  periods  or  events  in  isolation.  It  belongs  to  the 
whole,  and  is  to  be  determined  as  regards  any  special  person 
by  his  worth  for  the  whole  and  by  the  degree  in  which  he  is 
a  factor  of  its  good.  Applied  to  Jesus  Christ  this  means 
that  He  is  not  a  problem  in  local  but  in  general  history,  not 
in  a  special  but  in  all  literature,  not  in  one  but  in  universal 
religion  ;  and  that  if  He  is  to  be  interpreted,  it  must  be  in 
the  terms  of  humanity,  and  not  merely  in  those  of  Judea  or 
Jewish  Hellenism.  He  is  a  natural  Being,  or  He  could  not 
be  historical  ;  but  He  is  also  supernatural,  otherwise  He  could 
not  hold  His  sovereign  position,  or  exercise  His  universal 
functions.  And  these,  as  matters  of  experience  and  not 
simply  of  speculation,  must  be  enquired  into  as  real  things. 


THE   PROBLEMS   THEY    FORMULATE       309 

2.  If  the  problem,  as  now  explicated  and  defined,  be  for- 
mulated for  purposes  of  discussion,  it  will  be  found  to  fall 
into  three  main  questions. 

I.  The   historical   person  and  action  of  Jesus  :    what   He 
was,  what  He  designed  to  be  and  to  do,  what  He  became, 
and  what  He  did.     The  discussion  will    here    be  concerned 
chiefly,  though  not   exclusively,  with  the   representation    of 
Him  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels. 

II.  The  interpretation  of  Jesus  as  the  Christ:  or  how  His 
Society  conceived  Him,  and  what  it  became  through  conceiv- 
ing Him  as  it  did.     In  this  case  we  shall  be  mainly  occupied 
with  the  apostolical  writings,  under  which  is   included    the 
Gospel  according  to  John. 

III.  How  the  religion  which  came  to  be  through  the  union 
of  the  historical  action  with  the  theological  interpretation  of 
His  Person,  stands  related  to  the  idea  of  religion  given  in  the 
nature  of  man  and  unfolded    in    the    course   of  his  history. 
This  question  will  carry  us  back  into  the  fields  of  the  com- 
parative History  and  Philosophy  of  Religion. 


oifj.at  Kavri  /jLVpiaiv  fj.iav 

,  t]i>  evvovs  irapfj.  —  SOPHOCLES. 


Dans  1'espace  de  temps  qui  s'est  ecoule  de  la  mort  d'Auguste  a  la  mort 
de  Marc-Aurele,  une  religion  nouvelle  s'est  produite  dans  le  monde  ; 
elle  s'appelle  le  christianisme.  L'essence  de  cette  religion  consiste  a 
croire  qu'une  grande  manifestation  celeste  s'est  faite  en  la  personne  de 
Jesus  de  Nazareth,  etre  divin  qui,  apres  une  vie  toute  surnaturelle,  a  ete 
mis  a  mort  par  les  Juifs,  ses  compatriotes,  et  est  ressuscite  le  troisieme 
jour.—  RENAN. 

Das  haben  vor  Zeiten  die  hochsten  Theologen  gethan,  dass  sie  von  der 
Menschheit  Christi  geflogen  sind  zu  der  Gottheit  und  sich  allein  an 
dieselbige  gehanget  ;  —  ich  bin  vor  Zeiten  auch  ein  solcher  Doktor  gewe- 
sen,  dass  ich  hab  die  Menschheit  ausgeschlossen  ;  —  aber  man  muss  so 
steigen  zu  der  Gottheit  und  sich  daran  halten,  dass  man  die  Menschheit 
Christi  nicht  verlasse.  —  LUTHER. 

Christus  konnte  nur  der  Sohn  der  Jungfrau  sein,  er  ist  selbst  eine 
Jungfrau  im  Gemiithe,  gleich  dem  ersten  Adam  in  der  Schopfung.  —  JACOB 
BOEHME. 

Dass  alle  Lehren  und  Vorschriften,  welche  sich  in  der  christlichen 
Kirche  entwickeln,  nur  dadurch  ein  allgemein-gtiltiges  Ansehn  erhalten, 
dass  sie  auf  Christum  zuruckgefuhrt  werden,  griindet  sich  nur  auf  seine 
vollkommne  Urbildlichkeit  in  allem,  was  mit  der  Kraft  des  Gottesbewusst- 
seins  in  Verbindung  steht.—  SCHLEIERMACHER. 

Die  Krafte  der  ewigen  Gottheit  offenbarten  sich  in  Christo  nicht  neben 
den  Kraften  seiner  Menschheit,  nicht  als  tibermenschliche  ;  sondern  eben 
in  den  Kraften  seiner  Menschheit,  eben  darin,  dass  seine  menschlichen 
Krafte  ubernaturlich,  d.  h.  liber  die  durch  den  Siindfall  depravirte  Natur 
hinausgehende  waren  und  er  dieser  depravirten  Natur  schlechthm  iiber- 
legen  war,  so  dass  sie,  wo  und  wann  er  wirken  wollte,  fiir  sein  Konnen 
nirgends  eine  Schranke  bildete.  —  EBRARD. 

Hat  es  jemals  einen  schlechthin  originalen  Menschen  gegeben,  so  ist 
es  Jesus  gevvesen. 

Vor  Christo  hatten  wir  von  Gott  gehort,  in  Christo  haben  wir  ihn 
gesehen.  —  R.OTHE. 

Jesus  est  la  plus  haute  de  ces  colonnes  qui  montrent  a  1'homme  d'ou 
il  vient  et  ou  il  doit  tendre.  En  lui  s'est  condense  tout  ce  qu'il  y  a  de 
bon  et  d'eleve  dans  notre  nature.  —  RENAN. 


PART    I 

THE  FOUNDER   AS  AN   HISTORICAL   PERSON,  OR  JESUS 
AS   HE  APPEARS    IN   THE   SYNOPTIC   GOSPELS 

CHAPTER    I 
HOW   HIS   PERSON   IS  CONCEIVED 

IN  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  and  here  we  may  also  include  the 
Fourth,  the  two  views  of  Jesus  which  we  are  accustomed 
to  distinguish  as  the  natural  and  the  supernatural  are  alike 
represented.  It  is  through  their  conflict  that  the  simple 
story  of  a4humble  and  beautiful  life  is  turned  into  the 
supreme  drama  of  history.  The  one  view  is  worked  out 
with  conspicuous  fidelity  to  its  last  logical  consequences  by 
men  who  honestly  believed  it;  the  other  view  is  presented 
with  ingenuous  simplicity,  though  with  varying  degrees  of 
conscious  and  consistent  completeness,  by  the  writers,  who, 
either  out  of  personal  knowledge  or  from  collected  and 
sifted  materials,  attempted  to  tell  the  story  of  His  life.  The 
views  so  stand  together  as  to  compel  us  to  compare  them  as 
respects  their  adequacy  and  historical  truth. 

§   I.      The  Natural   View  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels 

I.  What  this  view  involves  has  just  been  stated  :!  it  con- 
ceives man  as  an  empirical  unit,  and  may  be  said  to  emphasize 
six  factors  of  being  and  character :  race,  family,  place,  time, 
education,  and  opportunity.  Race  denotes  man's  whole 
inheritance  as  a  human  being,  the  mental  endowment  which 

1  Ante,  pp.  307-8. 

3" 


312  NATURAL  FACTORS  OF  CHARACTER 

belongs  to  his  special  stock,  the  experience  that  has  through 
long  ages  and  by  ceaseless  struggles  for  the  means  of  sub- 
sistence and  against  the  enemies  that  threaten  them,  been 
accumulated  by  a  given  people  for  transference  to  its  sons. 
Family  describes  the  man's  immediate  ancestry,  the  qualities 
that  come  to  him  by  blood  and  birth,  the  class  from  which 
he  springs,  whether  governing,  servile,  professional,  or  indus- 
trial, with  all  that  these  signify  as  to  transmitted  faculty  and 
advantage  or  disadvantage  in  beginning  the  struggle  to  live. 
Place  speaks  of  geographical  and  social  environment,  the 
atmosphere  which  the  man  breathes  and  which  quickens  or 
deadens  the  pulses  of  his  body  and  mind.  Time  is  but  a 
name  for  a  reigning  spirit,  a  mood,  which  affects  the  man's 
temper  and  soul  as  the  place  affects  his  physical  organism,  and 
which  makes  him  love  freedom  or  fear  the  king,  breathe  high 
hopes  or  nurse  despondency  and  despair.  Education  is  that 
study  of  the  past  which  gives  mastery  over  the  present,  the 
development  of  faculty  by  skilled  hands,  teaching  a  man  to 
make  the  most  and  best  of  himself  by  telling  him  what  men 
in  other  ages  have  thought  and  achieved.  And  opportunity  is 
the  chance  which  comes  to  a  man  to  use  to  the  uttermost 
what  he  is,  what  he  has  inherited,  and  what  he  has  acquired. 
The  most  that  the  natural  view  expects  from  a  man  is  that 
he  be  equal  to  the  sum  of  all  the  conditions  concerned  in  his 
making.  If  he  transcends  them,  then  we  are  landed  either 
in  an  insolubility  or  in  the  recognition  of  an  unknown  factor 
which  may  be  named  personal  genius,  but  can  hardly  be 
described  as  normal  or  according  to  law.  In  any  case  this 
appeal  to  an  undiscovered  or  incalculable  cause  differs  only 
in  name  from  the  appeal  to  the  supernatural. 

Whether  these  natural  factors  of  personality  are  equal  to 
the  explanation  of  Jesus  may  appear  in  the  process  of  the 
discussion.  At  present  we  have  only  to  note  that  while  He 
lived  the  natural  was  the  obvious  view  of  Him,  taken  as  a 
matter  of  course  by  men  of  all  classes  and  kinds.  In  His  own 


THE  NATURAL  VIEW  GENERAL    313 

city,  where  He  had  lived  like  any  other  child  subject  unto  his 
parents  (u-roracrcro/ievo?  aurols,  i.e.  rols  yovevaiv^),*  the  mul- 
titude (ol  TroXAm)  even  after  He  had  achieved  fame,  described 
Him  as  "the  carpenter,"  the  son  of  Mary,  and  refused  to  dis- 
tinguish Him  in  any  special  way  from  either  His  brothers  or 
His  sisters.2  He  vas  but  "  Joseph's  son,"  even  as  they.3 
To  Himself  Mary,  when  she  found  Him  in  the  temple,  said, 
"Child,  Thy  father  and  T  sought  thee  sorrowing."4  The  very 
disciples  did  not  at  first  think  of  Him  otherwise.  Philip 
named  Him  "Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  son  of  Joseph,"5  Peter 
rebuked  Him,6  Judas  betra)  ed  Him,  and  the  rest  appealed  to 
Him  as  Rabbi,  the  Master,7  most  familiar  of  names  to  the  men 
of  Israel.  Even  His  own  famil)  thought  of  Him  as  one  they 
could  claim  and  coerce  ;  and  justified  their  attempt  to  force 
Him  by  saying,  "  He  is  beside  Himself."8  To  the  scribes 
He  was  but  as  one  who  blasphemed  when  He  spoke  of 
forgiving  sins.9  The  Pharisees  explained  His  miracles  of 
healing  by  demoniacal  possession,10  a  charge  as  common  and 
as  natural  then  as  witchcraft  used  to  be  in  our  own  darker 
ages,  The  very  notion  that  He  could  wake  the  ruler's 
daughter  from  the  sleep  which  was  called  death,  roused  the 
crowd  to  scornful  laughter.11  Indeed,  so  rooted  was  this 
natural  view  of  Him,  that  we  need  to  remember  it  before 
we  can  be  just  to  the  men  who  opposed  Him  and  who  com- 
passed His  death.  They  judged  Jesus  to  be  a  common  man, 
holding  that  any  who  believed  otherwise  were  deceived.12 
His  very  home  condemned  Him,  for  out  of  Galilee  came  no 
prophet.16  He  is  to  the  Pharisees  but  an  itinerant  sophist,  so 
little  instructed  that  even  the  Herod ians  were  expected  to 

1  Luke  ii.  51  ;  cf.  41,  43.  *   Murk  vi.  3  ;   Matt.  xiii.  55. 

2  Luke  iv.  22  ;  John  vi.  42.  4   Luke  ii.  48.  5  John  i.  45. 
6   Mark  viii.  32  ;   M  at.  xvi.  22.             7    Mark  ix.  5,  xi.  21  ;  John  i.  38. 

8  Mark  iii.  21  ;  cf.  31-35  ;   Matt.  xii.  46-49,  xiii.  57  ;   Luke  viii.  19-21. 

9  Mark  ii.  7  ;    Matt.  ix.  3.  10    Matt.  ix.  34. 
11   Mark  v.  39  ;    Matt.  ix.  24.                   "  John  vii.  47. 
13  John  vii.  52. 


314          THE   CHIEF   PRIEST   AND   JESUS 

ensnare  Him.1  He  was  despised  as  the  friend  of  publicans 
and  sinners,2  watched  that  He  might  be  accused  as  a 
Sabbath-breaker,3  allowed  to  go  at  large  simply  from  fear 
of  the  people.*  The  Sadducee,  though  he  was  not,  like  the 
scribe,  a  trained  disputant,  yet  had  a  logical  puzzle  of  his 
own  concerning  marriage  in  the  resurrection,  and  with  it  he 
tried  to  perplex  Jesus,5  just  as  he  was  wont  to  confound  the 
Pharisee.  All  these  men  judged  Him  by  the  standards  they 
applied  to  one  another  ;  and  as  they  judged,  they  handled 
Him,  and  He  died  at  their  hands  just  as  any  ordinary  person 
would  have  died.  In  all  this  there  may  be  matter  that  requires 
explanation,  but  nothing  calling  for  either  surprise  or  censure. 
2.  But  the  two  men  whose  conduct  is  most  completely 
governed  by  this  natural  view  are  Caiaphas  and  Pilate,  for 
these  two  so  believed  it  as  to  become  the  joint  authors  of 
the  tragedy  of  the  Cross.  Their  relation  to  this  tragedy  was 
indeed  very  different ;  the  one  was  the  author  of  the  plot,  the 
other  the  cause  of  the  catastrophe.  Caiaphas  was  a  Sadducee, 
an  aristocrat  in  family  and  feeling,  head  of  the  Jewish  Church, 
and  an  authority  in  the  State,  with  the  instincts  and  habits 
of  the  ruler  controlled  by  the  mind  and  exercised  in  the  man- 
ner of  the  ecclesiastic.  In  the  Sanhedrim  his  characteristic 
qualities  had  room  for  the  freest  and  most  effective  play, 
especially  when  it  met  in  such  confusion  and  alarm  as 
followed  upon  the  events  at  Bethany  and  the  triumphal 
entry.'1  For  it  is  evident  that  Jesus  had,  in  spite  of  Himself, 
become  a  political  personage.  In  Israel  religion  and  politics 
were  not  two  things,  but  one  and  the  same  ;  for  the  name  that 
denoted  the  strongest  faith  of  the  people  expressed  also  their 
highest  hope,  their  yearning  after  freedom  from  the  yoke 
of  the  alien.  The  Messiah  was  expected  to  vanquish  Caesar  ; 

1  Matt.  xxii.  15  ff.  ;  Mark  xii.  13.         *  Luke  v.  30  ;  xv.  2  ;  Mark  ii.  16. 

8  Luke  vi.  7  ;  Mark  iii.  6.  *  Luke  xx.  19,  20. 

5  Mark  xii.  18-27  ;  Luke  xx.  27-40. 

8  John  xi.  47  ;  cf.  Mark  xii.  13-17  ;  xiv.  1-2  ;  Luke  xx.  17-26. 


JESUS    AND   THE    POPULACE  315 

and  expectancy  easily  translates  itself  into  action,  especi- 
ally when  it  lives  in  the  heart  of  a  passionate  race.  Rulers 
who  do  not  believe  fear  profoundly  the  people  who  do ; 
the  statesmanship  that  is  calculation  dreads  the  enthusiasm 
which  is  ready  to  sacrifice  its  all  in  order  that  it  may  attain 
its  end,  without  being  able,  or  indeed  caring,  to  balance 
or  to  measure  the  forces  which  oppose  it.  And  in  this 
council  two  different  kinds  of  unbelief  sat  facing  each  other 
in  solemn  and  unmasked  fear.  There  was  the  unbelief  of  the 
Sadducee,  who  knew  Moses  but  not  the  prophets,  who  neither 
expected  nor  desired  any  other  Anointed  than  the  priesthood 
which  stood  to  him  as  the  finest  blossom  of  his  race.  And 
there  was  the  unbelief  of  the  Pharisee,  who  preached  the 
Messiah  that  was  to  come,  but  who  thought  it  best  that 
the  Pharisee  should  believe  in  the  preaching  while  the  people 
believed  in  the  Messiah. 

And  the  circumstances  of  the  moment  made  action  by 
the  multitude  on  the  ground  of  their  faith  at  once  most 
probable  and  most  inconvenient.  The  Passover  was  at  hand, 
Jerusalem  was  filled  by  an  expectant  crowd,  massed,  as  it 
were,  into  a  colossal  person,  sensitive  on  the  outside  to 
the  softest  touch  of  national  hope  or  fear,  while  within, 
like  a  fire  in  the  bones,  there  burned  the  fierce  passion 
for  the  religion  of  their  ancient  race.  Through  this  crowd 
the  sudden  fame  of  Jesus  swept,  fused  it,  inspired  it,  moved 
it  by  the  delirious  hope  that  here,  at  last,  was  the  Messiah 
come  to  break  in  pieces  the  heathen  oppressor,  and  to 
purge  the  holy  city  from  the  defilement  of  his  presence.1 
The  Council  knew  the  people,  and  also  knew  the  procurator,3 
whom  it  seemed  to  see  sitting  in  his  palace,  jealous,  vindic- 
tive, watching  as  with  a  hundred  eyes  for  an  occasion  to 
interfere.  And  it  stood  bewildered  between  the  rival  terrors  : 
on  the  one  hand,  the  uncalculating  and  incalculable  passion 

1  Matt.  xxi.  8-1 1  ;  Luke  xix.  35-40,  47,  48  ;  John  xii.  12-15. 
1  Luke  xiii.  i. 


3i6         THE    STATECRAFT   OF   CAIAPHAS 

of  the  crowd,  and,  on  the  other,  the  cold  omnipotence  of 
Rome,  here  so  easily  roused  and  so  pitiless  when  provoked. 
Just  then  Caiaphas  stood  up,  the  one  masterful  spirit  who 
could  command  the  storm.  He  had  the  significant  yet  dark 
distinction  of  being  "  High  Priest  that  fateful  year,"  and  was 
about  to  fulfil  his  office  in  a  sense  and  manner  he  little 
dreamed  of.  He  spoke  with  a  certain  imperious  scorn  words 
that  may  be  paraphrased  thus  : 1  "  Ye  know  nothing  at  all : 
the  public  safety  is  the  supreme  law,  and  must  not  be  en- 
dangered by  the  passion  which  in  the  populace  is  a  fitful 
madness,  easily  kindled,  but  only  to  be  cunningly  quenched. 
In  this  case  it  can  best  be  quenched  through  its  cause ; 
smite  the  hero  the  populace  admires,  and  their  admiration 
will  die  into  disgust."  The  words  seemed  those  of  gifted 
sagacity ;  Jesus  was  nothing,  the  mere  creation  of  a  fana- 
ticism blinded  by  many  disappointments  ;  and,  though  He 
was  guiltless  of  crime,  yet  it  was  the  high  expedient  of 
statesmanship  to  save  the  people  by  making  an  end  of  Him. 
And  if  He  were  only  the  common  person  the  priest  and  the 
Council  conceived  Him  to  be,  who  will  say  that  the  expedient 
was  foolish  or  unfitted  for  its  purpose?  For  what  is  the 
wisdom  of  statecraft  but  ingenuity  in  the  invention,  not  of 
just,  but  of  effectual  means  to  desired  ends  ? 

It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  the  policy  of  the  Council 
and  the  mefhod  of  the  chief  priest  ought  to  be  judged. 
Grant  that  Jesus  was  the  mere  natural  man  they  conceived 
Him  to  be,  and  we  do  not  see  how  they  could  have  acted 
otherwise.  They  were  not  heroic  men,  but  they  meant  well 
to  their  land  and  State,  arid  feared  above  everything  the  anger 
or  suspicion  of  Rome  ;  for  they  had  daily  to  face  a  governor 
who  was  more  imperious  than  his  master,  and  to  watch  sol- 
diers who  cared  for  nothing  save  his  commands.  And  while 
they  knew  and  trembled,  the  people  were  ignorant  and  with- 
out fear.  In  the  soul  of  Caiaphas  concern  for  the  nation,  the 
1  John  xi.  49,  50. 


THE   COUNCIL   AND    ROME  317 

temple,  the  priesthood,  the  worship,  was  uppermost ;  and  he 
was  anxious  to  give  the  Roman  no  occasion  to  doubt  his  own 
or  his  people's  loyalty.  Possibly,  too,  he  was  not  disinclined 
to  read  the  Pharisaic  opposition  a  needed  lesson.  He  would 
say  to  them,  as  it  were  :  "  You  see  what  danger  lies  in  your 
theories,  and  how  easily  they  may  become  explosive  forces  in 
the  heart  of  the  populace.  You  teach  that  Jehovah  alone 
ought  to  be  King  over  this  people  ;  that  Caesar  is  a  heathen 
and  an  oppressor  ;  and  that  when  God  pleases  to  send  His 
Messiah  freedom  will  be  achieved.  They  think  that  this  Jesus 
is  the  Messiah  you  talk  of,  and  wait  only  a  sign  from  him 
to  revolt.  And,  though  he  seems  a  peaceably-inclined,  well- 
meaning,  and  even  innocent  person,  yet  some  event  which 
they  may  take  as  a  sign  may  happen  without  premeditation 
or  warning.  Chance  may  bring  it,  and  we  may  any  moment 
find  Jerusalem  in  arms  against  Rome.  There  is  nothing  so 
safe  as  a  sound  conservatism,  which,  though  not  at  all  con- 
tented with  what  is,  yet  fears  more  what  may  be  ;  and  so  does 
its  best  to  maintain  the  actual  lest  the  attempt  to  realize 
the  ideal  become  a  catastrophe  which  shall  engulf  the  whole 
nation.  Let  us  therefore  do  our  utmost  to  prove  our  loyalty 
to  Cajsar ;  charge  this  man  with  being  an  agitator,  an  enemy 
of  order  and  of  Rome,  surrender  him  as  a  pledge  of  our 
obedience  to  the  Emperor  ;  and  so  out  of  our  very  trouble 
pluck  the  approval  of  our  conquerors,  the  peace  of  our  State, 
and  the  continuance  of  our  authority.  '  It  is  expedient  for 
you  that  one  man  should  die  for  the  people,  and  that  the 
whole  nation  perish  not.' "  On  his  own  premisses,  there 
seemed  to  be  statesmanship  in  his  policy  ;  on  the  Evange- 
lists', his  policy  appeared  a  devil's  counterfeit  of  the  purpose 
and  mind  of  God. 

3.  The  same  conception  as  to  the  status  and  nature  of  Jesus 
which  governed  the  policy  of  Caiaphas  possessed  the  mind 
of  Pilate.  He  is  an  unconscious  actor  in  the  drama,  with 
only  the  dimmest  sense  that  anything  extraordinary  is  pro- 


3i8        ROME    IMPERSONATED    IN    PILATE 

ceeding,  or  that  he  is  playing  more  than  his  ordinary  part.1 
There  is  something  fateful  and  pathetic  in  the  position  and 
action  of  this  man  ;  when  we  think  of  him,  we  feel  that  jus- 
tice must  be  blind,  or  she  would  pity  too  much  to  be  just. 
Here  is  the  only  Roman  known  to  history  who  saw  Jesus ; 
but  his  eyes  had  no  vision  in  them,  and  so  he  looked  as  one 
who  did  not  see,  or  so  saw  as  only  to  misjudge  and  mis- 
handle. In  him  Rome  was  impersonated.  Out  of  him 
looked  her  imperial  strength,  in  him  dwelt  for  a  subject 
people  her  statesmanship.  As  he  faced  the  Jews  he  thought 
of  Csesar,  and  ruled  the  subject  race  with  his  feet  firm  planted 
on  an  empire  which  stretched  westward  to  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules,  northward  to  the  forests  of  Germany  and  the 
outermost  coasts  of  Gaul.  And  what  were  the  Jews  to  him  ? 
Turbulent  men,  intolerable  for  their  intolerant  superstition,  a 
people  that  the  imperial  image  on  a  banner  provoked  into 
madness,2  who  would  not  allow  the  shadow  of  a  Gentile  to 
fall  on  their  temple,  though,  indeed,  that  temple  was  so  poor 
a  place  as  to  be  unadorned  by  the  statue  of  any  god.  Still 
it  was  necessary,  the  people  being  conquered,  to  rule  them 
considerately — if  they  behaved  ;  but  if  they  were  disaffected 
at  this  high  feast  and  showed  themselves  seditious,  or  even 
if  they  only  threatened  to  be,  then  in  Caesar's  name  let 
their  blood  be  mingled  with  their  sacrifices.3  And  what 
did  Jesus  seem  to  this  man  as  He  stood  before  him  ?  A 
Jew,  only  a  Jew,  though  most  unlike  the  typical  Jew  in  the 
gentleness  of  His  bearing,  the  mystery  of  His  speech,  and 
the  glamour  of  soul  which  the  Roman  felt  touch  his  heart, 
now  waking  him  to  mockery,  now  moving  him  to  pity.4  He 
knew  the  chief  priest  and  the  Council  ;  and  he  had  for  them 
the  sort  of  contempt  the  conqueror  feels  for  those  of  the  con- 
quered who  seek  by  excessive  suppleness  to  keep  themselves 

1  Matt,  xxvii.  24  ;  John  xviii.  31,  37,  xix.  6. 

*  Josephus,  Antiq.  xviii.  iii.  1-2.  *  Luke  xiii.  I. 

4  Luke  xxiii.  4-7,  13-22  ;  John  xix.  8-9,  12,  19-22. 


IS    TOUCHED   WITH    PITY  319 

in  place,  mollifying  with  the  one  hand  the  strong-willed  victor, 
and  soothing  with  the  other  the  irritable  impotence  of  the 
vanquished.  Jesus  was  a  being  of  another  order  than  these 
men;  and  though  Pilate,  listening  to  His  discourse,  was  so 
vividly,  by  contrast,  reminded  of  Epicurus  and  his  great 
Roman  disciple,  as  to  throw  out  the  jesting  question,  "  What 
is  truth?"  yet  he  turned  away  with  the  feeling  that  he  would 
save  Him, — unless,  indeed,  the  obstinate  unreason  of  this 
most  excitable  people  made  it  too  troublesome.1  Eor  Rome 
did  not  mind  the  shedding  of  blood  when  it  was  necessary  ; 
but  it  did  not  love  too  frequent  bloodshed  in  any  province, 
Caesar  being  then  prone  to  suspect  some  fault  in  the  gover- 
nor. So  it  might  happen,  if  His  death  were  needed  to  keep 
the  turbulent  quiet,  that  it  would  be  easiest  to  let  Him  die — 
worse  things  were  done  daily  in  the  amphitheatre  under  the 
Emperor's  own  eye. 

The  successive  scenes  of  the  drama  are  full  of  the 
incidents  which  are  character,  —  the  priests  anxious  to 
make  out  Jesus  to  be  the  political  personage  their  policy 
required  Him  to  be,  Pilate  wishful  to  regard  Him  as  a 
religious  person  in  whom  Rome  had  no  concern,  though  the 
Jewish  law  might  condemn  Him  ;  while  Jesus  moves  in  the 
midst  aloof  from  them  all  and  within  a  world  of  His  own. 
According  to  both  the  Synoptists  and  John,  the  chief  priest 
asks  Him  as  to  His  teaching  in  general,  and  specially  touch- 
ing the  temple,  1 1  is  own  person  and  claims,  but  nothing 
concerning  any  political  aim  or  purpose."  Yet,  when  they 
bring  Him  before  the  Procurator,  their  only  charge  is  political. 
Pilate  at  first  declines  to  hear  them  :  "  Take  Him  yourselves, 
and  judge  Him  according  to  your  law." "  But  they  deftly 
accentuate  the  political  accusation  which  Pilate  could  under- 
stand, and  was  bound  to  take  notice  of:  "  He  has  claimed  to 

1  John  xviii.  38,  39. 

2  Mutt.    xxvi.    59-^5  ;   Mark  xiv.  55-63  ;    Luke  xxii.  66-71  ;  John  xviii. 
19-24.  3  Jolin  xviii.  31. 


320  THE   VISION    OF   PILATE 

be  King  of  the  Jews."  l  But  the  very  gravity  of  the  charge 
proved  to  the  Roman  its  absurdity ;  he  could  not  take  it 
seriously,  and  suspected  that  some  religious  idea  or  sectarian 
spite  lurked  under  its  pclicical  form.  He  tried  to  make  out 
the  truth  by  questioning  Jesus,  who  would  not  disown  His 
ideal  Kinghood  in  terms  which  would  have  falsified  their 
charge.2  The  definition  He  gave  only  the  more  bewildered 
the  governor,  and  tempted  him  to  conceal  under  a  question 
that  jested  a  suspicion  that  was  growing  into  a  certainty.3 
He  next  tried,  by  showing  the  pitiful  figure  of  the  scourged 
and  mocked  King,  to  awaken  them  to  the  sense  of  the  absurd 
in  their  charge,  but  they  would  not  be  turned  aside.  In  their 
fear  of  Jesus  they  lost  fear  of  Pilate,  and  assailed  him  where 
they  knew  he  was  weakest :  "  If  thou  release  this  man,  thou 
art  not  Caesar's  friend,"  for  had  not  Jesus,  by  making  Himself 
a  King,  set  Himself  up  as  a  rival  over  against  Caesar  ?  4 

And  so  we  see  Pilate  standing  in  dubious  and  deliberative 
mood,  now  scornfully  temporizing  with  the  multitude,  and 
now  patronizing  Jesus,  befriending  Him  with  a  sort  of  lofty 
condescension  which  was  touched  with  regret,  looking  Him, 
as  he  vainly  thought,  through  and  through,  though  never 
failing  to  read  the  mind  and  motives  of  His  accusers.  But 
even  when  most  convinced  of  the  innocence  of  Jesus,  he 
is  perfectly  sure  of  His  mere  manhood,  though  it  be  of  a 
type  rare  in  the  genus  fanatic.  So  he  believes  himself  to 
have  power,  though  he  thinks  Jesus  has  none.  But  let  us 
imagine  that,  in  the  very  moment  when  he  boasted  his 
power  to  crucify  or  to  release,5  a  lucid  vision  had  come 
to  him,  and  that  he  had  beheld  the  centuries  before  him 
unroll  their  wondrous  secret.  In  less  than  eighty  years 
he  sees  in  every  city  of  the  Roman  world  societies  of  men 
and  women  meeting  in  the  name  of  this  Jesus  and  singing 
praises  to  Him  as  to  God  ;  while  so  powerful  has  His  Name 

1  Mark  xv.  2  ;  John  xviii.  33  ;  xix.  21-22.      2  Mark  xv.  3  ;  Luke  xxiii.  3. 
3  John  xviii.  36-38.  4  John  xix.  12.  6  John  xix.  10. 


AND    HIS    AWAKENING  321 

grown  in  some  provinces  that  the  very  temples  are  deserted, 
and  the  most  famous  governor  of  the  day  writes  to  ask  the 
Emperor  what  policy  he  is  to  pursue.  Then  he  sees  Rome, 
astonished  and  angry  at  the  might  of  the  Name,  lose  her 
proud  tolerance,  become  vindictive,  brutal,  even  turning  per- 
secutor, and  making  the  profession  of  the  Name  a  crime 
punishable  with  death.  But  all  the  resources  of  the  Empire 
are  powerless  against  the  Name  ;  the  legions  that  had  carried 
the  Roman  Eagles  into  the  inaccessible  regions  lying  round 
the  civilized  world,  forcing  the  tide  of  barbarism  back  before 
them,  here  availed  nothing.  And  he  beholds  in  less  than 
three  hundred  years  the  symbol  of  the  Cross  on  which  he 
was  about  to  crucify  this  Jesus,  float  victoriously  from  the 
capitol  ;  while  the  Emperor  sits,  not  amid  patricians  in  the 
Roman  Senate,  but  in  a  council  of  Christian  pastors,  all  with- 
out pride  of  birth,  all  without  names  the  Senate  would  have 
honoured,  many  maimed,  some  even  eyeless,  disfigured  by  the 
tortures  Rome  had  inflicted  in  her  vain  attempt  to  extinguish 
the  infamous  thing.  In  another  hundred  years  he  sees  the 
very  empire  herself  fallen,  while  in  her  seat  sits  one  whose  only 
claim  to  rule  is  that  he  represents  the  Crucified  ;  and  because  he 
does  so,  he  builds  up  a  kingdom  beside  which  Rome  at  her 
vastest  was  but  as  a  hand-breadth,  and  the  city  that  had  been 
proudly  called  eternal  was  in  duration  only  as  the  child  of  a  day. 
And  if  Pilate  had  waked  from  his  dream  as  suddenly  as  he  had 
fallen  into  it,  and  looked  at  Jesus  sitting  before  him  mocked 
and  buffeted,  helpless  in  the  face  of  the  howling  mob,  deserted 
of  man,  manifestly  forsaken  of  His  God,  what  could  he  have 
said  but  this?  "  What  foolish  things  dreams  are!  Their  world 
is  a  sort  of  topsy-turvydom  of  reality  ;  for  were  this  vision  of 
mine  true,  then  the  invisible  kingdom  of  this  Man  would  be  the 
only  real  empire,  and  my  claim  of  power  either  to  crucifv  or  to 
release  Him  a  vain  and  empty  boast !  Happily  the  cross  will 
soon  restore  us  all  to  sanity,  and  show  the  vanity  of  the  dream."" 

1  Pliny,  /<:/•! s/.  96. 
I'.C.K.  21 


322  AN    IMMIRACULOUS    PASSION    BECOMES 

4.  This  much,  then,  and  no  more,  Caiaphas  and  Pilate  saw 
in  Jesus  ;  and  as  they  saw  they  judged  ;  and  as  they  saw  and 
judged,  so  did  all  the  men  of  cultivated  intelligence  in  their 
time  and  place.  They  were  not  unreasonable,  nor  without 
integrity,  but  honest  after  their  kind  ;  only,  like  all  who  are 
consciously  and  proudly  men  of  the  world,  they  made  their 
experience  the  measure  of  other  men  and  all  their  possibili- 
ties. I  wonder  how  many  of  all  the  sagacious  intellects  who 
govern  the  modern  State  and  meddle  in  politics,  national 
and  international,  or  how  many  of  the  disciplined  minds  who 
cultivate  in  our  day  the  natural  and  historical  sciences  would, 
similarly  situated,  have  judged  differently ;  certainly  not 
many — possibly  not  even  one  ;  for  the  modern  idea  of  the 
limitations  of  nature  is  more  positive  than  the  scientific 
belief  in  its  potencies  or  in  the  capabilities  of  man.  And 
the  idea  of  a  miraculous  person  might  well  seem  incredible 
even  to  men  who  were  credulous  as  to  miraculous  events  ; 
for  the  events  would  happen  without  their  consent,  while  the 
person  they  might  have  to  control  or  resist  and  dispose  of. 
But  if  anything  is  certain,  it  is  that  this  Jesus  represented 
forces  vaster  than  these  rulers  could  direct  or  command, 
arrest  or  annihilate.  In  its  outer  setting  the  Passion  is  as 
mean  and  sordid  a  transaction  as  ever  passed  before  the  eyes 
of  men  ;  in  all  the  outward  accessories  of  dignity  and 
grandeur  it  has  been  eclipsed  thousands  of  times.  Similar 
tragedies  have  been  all  too  common.  The  young  enthusiast, 
in  revolt  against  the  tyranny  and  oppression,  the  formalism 
and  make-believe  of  his  day,  dreaming  of  nobler  ideals  for 
men  and  society,  and  attempting  in  some  way  to  realize 
them,  is  a  figure  every  age  and  every  country  has  known. 
And  if  the  age  has  not  conquered  the  enthusiast  by  chang- 
ing him  into  the  spokesman  of  expediency  and  convention, 
it  has  yet  been  able,  without  any  dread  of  supernatural  retri- 
bution, to  bid  death  make  an  end  of  his  power  to  trouble. 
And  this  seemed  only  an  ordinary  case  of  the  social  and 


323 

religious  Reformer  in  conflict  with  an  established  order,  a 
collision  of  the  static  forces  which  preserve  a  society  against 
a  dynamic  force  which  threatened  its  disintegration.  That 
force  might  be  impersonated  in  a  character  of  rare  loveliness 
and  potent  charm,  but  revolution  is  not  made  agreeable 
to  the  men  who  hate  it  by  the  moral  excellence  of  those 
who  would  effect  it.  It  was  enough  that  Jesus  by  word 
and  action  threatened  the  order  of  the  temple  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  synagogue  ;  the  guardians  of  law  and  tra- 
dition could  only  unite  to  suppress  a  man  who  by  question- 
ing their  right  to  represent  God  and  rule  man,  assailed 
the  very  foundations  of  society.  And  they  acted  exactly 
as  men  situated  as  they  were,  and  believing  as  they  did, 
were  bound  to  act  :  explained  the  law  they  knew  to  the 
governor  who  did  not  know  it  in  a  form  he  was  certain  to 
understand  ;  and  then  demanded  that  he  who  had  the  power 
of  life  and  death  should  exercise  his  power  in  the  interests  of 
the  law  and  of  the  people  whose  sole  safety  it  was.  If  their 
reading  of  the  person  of  Jesus  was  right,  one  might  say  that 
their  conduct  exhibited  the  violence  which  is  born  of  panic, 
or  the  craft  learned  by  men  who  would,  while  slaves  them- 
selves, govern  an  enslaved  people  as  if  they  were  free,  but  he 
could  hardly  say  more.  But,  then,  the  plea  which  justifies 
them  leaves  us  with  a  riddle  which  has  no  fellow  in  all 
history  :  Ho\v  has  it  happened  that  a  transaction  so  common 
and  so  unspeakably  squalid  should,  alone  of  all  the  innumer- 
able similar  occurrences  in  time,  have  been  attended  by  con- 
sequences so  extraordinary  and  recreative? 

§   II.      The  Supernatural   Viciv  of  Jesus 

I.  The  mere  necessity  of  asking  this  question  is  enough 
to  suggest  that  there  must  have  been  in  the  person  of 
Jesus  elements  which  escaped  the  eye  of  priest  and  scribe 
and  procurator,  factors  or  forces  of  change  which  His  death 
might  strengthen  but  could  not  dissolve.  And  we  know 


324      THE    HYPOTHESIS    OF   THE   GOSPELS 

that  there  were  even  then  a  few  men  who,  for  reasons  they 
dimly  felt  rather  than  clearly  perceived,  ventured  to  differ 
from  the  scholars  and  statesmen  who  imagined  that  the 
duty  of  the  world  was  to  think  their  thoughts  after  them. 
These  men  were  for  the  most  part  poor  and  ignorant 
enough,  but  their  disadvantages  were  lost  in  one  supreme 
advantage — they  had  known  Jesus,  and  had  learned  of 
Him  ;  and  because  of  this  learning  they  were  soon  able,  by 
what  I  can  only  describe  as  an  extraordinary  act  of  faith,, 
to  read  a  meaning  into  Him  which  the  men  of  cultivated 
intelligence  had  failed  to  find.  They  formulated  a  theory 
— or,  more  correctly,  an  hypothesis — of  His  place  and 
person,  which  had  this  remarkable  peculiarity  :  it  was  an 
hypothesis  which  did  not  so  much  explain  facts  that  had 
been  or  that  were,  as  facts  that  were  to  be.  It  was  what 
we  may  term  a  prophetic  and  a  creative  hypothesis, — 
prophetic  because  centuries  of  history  were  to  be  needed,, 
not  to  make  it  conceivable,  yet  to  justify  it  ;  creative 
because  it  was  to  call  into  existence  the  very  facts  that 
were  to  be  its  justification.  And  what  was  this  hypo- 
thesis ?  It  was  the  idea  embodied  in  our  Gospels,  common  to- 
all  of  them,  though  differently  complexioned  in  each  : — Jesus 
is  conceived  as  the  Messiah,  sent  of  God,  descended  through 
the  Jews,  come  to  live  and  die  for  the  saving  of  the  world. 
For  Him  all  past  Jewish  history  had  been  ;  towards  Him 
the  hopes  of  men  and  the  events  of  history  had  alike  con- 
verged. From  Him  went  out  the  light  that  was  to  en- 
lighten— the  life  that  was  to  quicken — the  nations.  Thus 
Mark,  the  oldest,  the  simplest,  the  most  objective,  yet  the 
most  picturesque  of  the  Gospels,  conceives  Jesus  as  the 
Messiah,1  prophesied  of  beforehand,2  announced  by  John,3 
declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God,4  the  Preacher  of  the  king- 
dom,5 whose  Gospel  is  to  be  proclaimed  to  all  the  nations,6 

1  L  i.  *  i.  2-3.  •  i.  7,  8. 

4  i.  II.  8  i.  14,  15.  •  xiii.  10  ;  xiv.  9. 


COMMON    AND    PROPHETIC  325 

the  Founder  of  the  new  society  who  calls  and  instructs  His 
disciples,1  the  Son  of  man  and  the  Lord  of  the  Sabbath,2  the 
Forgiver  of  sins,3  the  Doer  of  mighty  deeds,4  who  gives  His 
life  a  ransom  for  many,5  and  establishes  the  new  covenant 
in  His  blood.6  Matthew,  though  he  uses  Mark,  gives  more 
of  His  words  than  Mark,  enables  us  to  see  farther  into  His 
mind,  and  to  conceive  Him  and  His  work  more  as  He  Him- 
self conceived  them.  But  though  the  conception  is  larger, 
it  is  not  different.  He  is  "  the  Son  of  David,  the  Son  of 
Abraham."7  Yet  He  bears  the  name  Immanuel,  "which  is, 
being  interpreted,  God  with  us."8  The  Magi  worship 
Him  ;9  the  devil  tempts  Him  ;10  the  Baptist  hails  Him;11  the 
disciples  follow  Him.12  He  fulfils  the  law  and  the  prophets;13 
His  words  are  imperishable,  they  judge  men  ;  and  as  He 
judges  so  does  God.14  He  is  the  Son  who  alone  knows  the 
Father  and  only  through  Him  can  the  Father  be  known.15 
He  is  the  Messianic  king,  whose  reign  is  righteousness  and 
peace.16  Men  who  take  His  yoke  upon  them  find  rest  to 
their  souls.17  Death  ends  neither  His  existence  nor  His 
authority  ;  He  reigns  for  ever,  and  His  law  is  to  be  obeyed 
every  whit.18  Luke,  in  what  a  master  of  style  thought  the 
most  beautiful  book  in  all  literature,  has  fitly  enshrined  the 
most  beautiful  character  in  all  history.  He  has  a  wider 
outlook  than  Matthew,  and  places  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Adam, 
which  was  "the  Son  of  God,"19  in  the  same  relation  to  man 
that  in  the  first  Evangelist  He  had  held  to  Israel  ;  yet 
conceives  Him  as  "  the  Son  of  the  Most  High,"  "the  Holy 
One,''  supernaturally  begotten,  at  whose  birth  the  heavenly 
host  sang,  "  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth  peace 

1  i.  16-20.  2  ii.  28.  8  ii.  5-1 1 . 

4  i.  23-28,  30,  31,  40-45  ;    ii.   3-12  ;    iv.  35-41  ;    v.   21-43  ;   vii.  24~37V 

et  al.  5  x.  45.  6  xiv.  24.  7  i.  i. 

8   Matt.  i.  23.  9   Mark  ii.  1-12.  10  iv.  i-u.          "  iii.  13-15. 

12  iv.  18-22.  1S  v.  17.  "  vii.  21-27  ;  x.  32,  33. 

ts  xi.  27.  ia  vi.  33  ;  x.  34-42.  17  xi.  30. 

18  xxviii.  18-20.  19  iii.  38. 


326  THE    MIRACULOUS    PERSON 

among  men  of  good-will." *  The  author  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  with  more  speculative  audacity  than  the  synoptists, 
explained  His  pre-eminence  thus  : — "  The  Word  which  had 
ever  been  with  God,  and  was  God,  became  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us  ;  He,  the  only  begotten  Son,  which  is  in  the  bosom 
of  the  Father,  hath  declared  Him." a  And  this  incarnate 
Word,  this  manifested  and  manifesting  Son,  the  Evangelist 
identified  with  Jesus.  His  person,  in  a  figure  which  described 
a  significant  fact,  was  said  to  be  the  tabernacle  or  tent  of 
meeting  for  God  and  man  ;  and  they  that  could  look  within 
and  bear  the  light  saw  the  symbol  of  the  invisible  Presence, 
the  living  image  which  expressed  the  Eternal  God.  Jesus, 
in  a  word,  was  Deity  manifested  in  humanity  and  under  the 
conditions  of  time. 

Now  this  is  in  itself  an  extraordinary  conception,  and  it 
is  made  more  extraordinary  by  the  marvellous  way  in 
which  it  is  embodied  in  a  personal  history.  There  never 
was  a  loftier  idea,  or  one  better  calculated  to  challenge 
prompt  and  complete  contradiction,  than  the  one  expressed 
in  our  Gospels,  models  though  they  be  of  simplicity  in 
narrative  and  language.  Their  common  purpose  is  to 
describe  the  life  and  record  the  words  of  a  person  they 
conceive  as  miraculous.  Critics  differ,  and  with  good  reason, 
as  to  the  degree  of  the  miraculous  which  the  Evangelists 
severally  attribute  to  His  person.  Mark  does  not,  like  John, 
speak  of  Him  in  the  terms  of  Eternity  and  Deity.  John  and 
Mark  do  not,  like  Matthew  and  Luke,  write  of  a  supernatural 
conception  and  birth.  And  it  may  be  argued,  from  the  small 
place  accorded  to  it  and  its  presence  in  only  two  of  out- 
extant  documents,  that  the  idea  of  a  supernatural  birth 
was  not  held  to  be  essential  to  the  idea  of  the  miraculous 
person.  But  what  is  common  to  all  four  Evangelists,  and 
what  is  in  their  mind  essential,  is  the  idea  not  that  the 
miraculous  history  proves  the  person  to  be  supernatural,  but 

1  Luke  i.  32-35  ;  ii.  13,  14.  *  John  i.  1-2,  14,  18. 


A   RATIONAL   AND   CONSCIOUS    UNITY    327 

that  the  history  was  miraculous  because  it  articulated  and 
manifested  the  supernatural  person.  The  Gospels  may 
indeed  be  described  as  the  interpretation  of  this  person  in 
the  terms  of  history  ;  and  so  regarded  the  Jesus  of  Mark  is 
as  miraculous  as  the  Jesus  of  John.  There  is  more  than 
art,  there  is  real  philosophy,  in  the  evangelical  standpoint  and 
method  ;  for  the  supernatural  personality  is  more  able  to 
make  the  supernatural  in  nature  and  history  real  and  credible 
than  the  miraculous  in  nature  and  history  is  able  to  make 
the  supernatural  personality  living  and  intelligible.  But 
we  shall  be  better  able  to  understand  the  philosophy  and 
appreciate  the  art  when  we  have  studied  a  few  of  the  forms 
under  which  the  person  and  the  history  are  so  interwoven 
as  to  constitute  a  whole  whose  several  parts  authenticate  and 
illustrate  each  other. 

2.  Jesus  is  conceived  and  represented,  under  whatever 
terms  His  Person  may  be  described,  as  a  conscious  and 
continuous  Unity.  The  portrait  of  Him  is  consistent,  the 
work  of  writers  who  feel  themselves  to  be  dealing  with  a 
real  and  rational  being,  whose  words  could  be  reported  and 
whose  actions  could  be  narrated  in  language  men  could 
understand.  They  do  not  write  as  men  who  romance,  or 
who  know  that  they  are  relating  marvels  other  men  will  find 
it  hard  to  believe  :  on  the  contrary  they  write  soberly,  with 
the  unperplexed  consciousness  of  men  who  describe  matters 
of  fact  which,  though  wonderful,  are  yet  entirely  credible, 
because  in  keeping  with  the  person  and  attributes  of  Him 
whose  acts  they  are  said  to  be.  There  is  nothing  so  difficult 
as  to  unite  in  a  single  person  attributes  which  experience 
lias  never  seen  so  associated,  and  which  thought  persists 
in  conceiving  as  opposites  ;  but  what  would  be  not  so  much 
di.'licult  as  impossible  would  be  for  a  writer  to  betray  no 
consciousness  of  invention,  no  feeling  of  the  abnormal  ;  and 
to  maintain,  alike  as  regards  nature,  character,  and  action, 
the  inteirritv  and  concrete  unitv  of  his  hero  as  a  rational 


328         JESUS    NO    MYTHICAL   CREATION 

and  historical  being.  Yet  these  are  the  features  which 
distinguish  our  canonical  Gospels.  The  Evangelists,  how- 
ever simple,  uncritical,  and  credulous  we  may  conceive 
them  to  have  been,  yet  knew  the  distinction  between  the 
ordinary  and  the  extraordinary,  the  normal  and  the  miracu- 
lous ;  and  understood  how  little  compatible  miracles  were 
with  the  persons  of  the  men  they  met  in  daily  life.  Experi- 
ence, therefore,  could  not  supply  them  with  any  type  to 
which  they  could  conform  the  person  they  meant  to  portray. 
Two  alternatives  are  thus  alone  possible  :  either  the  portrait 
was  ideal,  a  product  of  the  creative  imagination,  or  real,  a 
study  from  life,  a  picture  which  embodied  personal  experi- 
ence and  observation. 

One  of  the  forms  under  which  the  theory  of  an  ideal 
portrait  may  be  presented  has  already  been  noticed.1  It  is 
an  unconscious  creation  of  the  mythical  imagination,  regret- 
ful and  retrospective.  The  theory  is  eminently  attractive : 
it  saves  the  honesty  of  the  writers,  it  does  justice  to  their 
affections,  it  credits  them  with  minute  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
literature,  it  endows  them  with  an  instructed  imagination, 
which  it  quickens  by  admiration  and  inspires  by  love.  But 
one  thing  it  fails  to  do  :  explain  how  a  selective  fancy  could, 
out  of  so  many  borrowed  and  broken  and  unjointed  frag- 
ments, weave  so  perfect  a  personal  unity  and  place  it  in  an 
historical  environment  so  suitable  and  consistent.  The  ideal 
remains  an  ideal,  do  with  it  what  we  will.  The  more  sponta- 
neously and  without  design  the  imagination  works,  the  less 
will  it  be  under  the  control  of  the  critical  reason,  and  there- 
fore the  more  independent  of  local  colouring  and  conditions  ; 
and  so  \vill  be  the  less  heedful  of  any  violent  improbabilities 
in  the  prosaic  matters  of  time  and  space.  But  these  are  the 
very  matters  in  which  the  evangelical  histories  are  so  real,  so 
natural,  and  so  exact.  They  are  full  of  the  feeling  for  the 
time  ;  they  understand  its  men,  schools,  classes,  parties  ;  they 
1  Ante,  pp.  10-12. 


BUT   A    STUDY    FROM    LIFE  329 

know  the  thoughts  that  are  in  the  air,  the  rumours  that  run 
along  the  street ;  they  are  familiar  with  the  catchwords  and 
phrases  of  the  period,  its  conventions,  questions,  modes  of 
discussion,  and  style  of  argument.  And  all  is  presented  with 
the  utmost  realism,  so  grouped  round  the  central  figure  as 
to  form  a  perfect  historical  picture,  He  and  His  setting  being 
so  built  together  as  to  constitute  a  single  organic  whole. 
Now  this  appears  a  feat  which  the  mythical  imagination, 
working  with  material  derived  from  the  Old  Testament, 
could  not  have  performed. .  It  could  not  have  made  its  hero 
mythical  without  making  the  conditions  under  which  He  lived 
and  the  persons  with  whom  He  lived  the  same.  The  realism 
of  these  conditions  and  persons  is  incompatible  with  the 
mythical  idealism  of  Him  through  whom  they  are,  and  whose 
environment  they  constitute.  The  organic  unity  of  person 
and  history  seems  to  involve  the  reality  of  both. 

It  appears,  then,  as  if  the  legitimate  inference  from  the 
histories  themselves  were  that  we  have  in  Jesus  a  study 
from  life — the  portrait  of  one  who  actually  lived  and  as  He 
lived.  And  it  is  this  which  gives  peculiar  value  to  the 
fact  that  the  authors  of  the  Gospels  use  to  describe  their 
subject  two  distinct  classes  of  terms,  expressing  ideas  that 
must  have  been  as  opposite  to  them  as  they  are  to  us, 
which  we  differentiate,  though  they  did  not,  as  "  natural "  and 
"  supernatural."  He  appears  in  all  four  Gospels  as  the  son  of 
Mary,  as  known  to  the  inhabitants  of  Nazareth,  where  he  had 
been  brought  up,  though  all  they  tell  us  is  that  He  was  a 
citizen  of  that  mean  city,  and  a  member  of  one  of  its 
humblest  families.  He  is  described  as  growing  in  stature,  in 
wisdom,  and  in  favour  with  God  and  man.  The  one  glimpse 
we  have  into  His  boyhood  shows  Him  as  a  child  His  parents 
could  lose  and  seek  sorrowing  ;  and  in  His  manhood  and 
public  ministry  He  is  seen  to  share  our  common  human  weak- 
nesses. He  is  represented  as  weary,  as  hungry,  as  thirsty,  as 
angry,  as  suffering,  as  in  need  of  sympathy,  as  seeking  God 


330   NATURAL  AND  SUPERNATURAL  IN  UNION 

in  prayer,  as  shrinking  from  death,  as  dying,  and  as  dead. 
The  attributes  and  the  fate  of  universal  man  are  His  as  they 
are  ours.  But  He  also  appears,  as  we  have  just  seen,  clothed 
in  quite  other  attributes  and  doing  quite  extraordinary  things. 
He  is  to  all  four  Evangelists  the  Son  of  God,  the  Messiah, 
Lord  of  the  Sabbath,  and  Saviour  of  men,  with  power  on 
earth  to  forgive  sins,  to  establish  the  kingdom  of  God,  to 
found  a  new  covenant  in  His  blood,  and  to  judge  the  people, 
acquitting  or  condemning  them  as  they  have  or  have  not 
confessed  Him.  And  He  behaves  as  one  to  whom  such  acts 
and  attributes  can  be  ascribed.  He  calls  disciples,  and 
forms  them  into  an  eternal  and  universal  society.  He  works 
miracles,  heals  the  diseased,  casts  out  devils,  feeds  the 
hungry,  even  raises  the  dead.  He  has  miracles  worked  upon 
Him,  is  transfigured  and  appears  in  a  visible  glory  which 
proclaims  Him  the  Son  of  God,  and,  after  suffering  the  death 
of  the  Cross  and  being  laid  in  the  grave,  He  is  raised  up 
and  appears  unto  many. 

Now  the  remarkable  thing  is  not  simply  that  these  attri- 
butes and  acts  are  represented  as  His,  but  that  they  are 
conceived  as  quite  natural  to  Him,  as  not  making  Him 
anomalous  or  abnormal,  but  as  leaving  Him  simple  and 
rational  and  real, — a  person  who  never  ceases  to  be  Himself, 
who  has  no  double  consciousness  and  plays  no  double  part, 
but  expresses  Himself  in  history  according  to  the  nature 
He  has  and  the  truth  within  Him.  There  is  nothing  quite 
like  this  in  literature,  no  miraculous  person  who  is  so  truly 
natural,  so  continuously  one  and  the  same  ;  and  no  writers  of 
the  miraculous  who  so  feel  that  they  are  dealing  with  what  is 
normal  and  regular  through  and  through.  These  are  things 
which  have  more  than  a  psychological  interest ;  they  speak 
of  men  who  have  stood  face  to  face  with  the  reality,  and 
are  conscious  of  only  describing  what  they  saw. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   HISTORICAL   PERSON    AND   HIS   PHYSICAL 
TRANSCENDENCE 

THE  art  with  which  the  Evangelists  interweave  into  a 
congruous  whole  the  person  and  the  acts  of  Jesus  is 
so  perfect  as  to  deserve  detailed  examination  ;  and  it  is  the 
more  remarkable  as  it  seems  unconscious  art,  accomplished 
by  men  who  know  not  what  they  do.  They  conceive  Him  to 
be  supernatural,  and  they  attribute  to  Him  miraculous  acts, 
yet  with  an  undesigned  discrimination  more  sure  than  the 
most  highly  educated  sense  they  observe  distinctions  and 
limits  which  leave  Him  the  most  natural  of  beings,  and  cause 
His  most  extraordinary  actions  to  appear  normal.  It  has 
been  customary  to  discuss  the  miracles  of  Jesus  as  questions 
now  in  philosophy,  whether  they  are  possible ;  now  in 
historical  criticism,  whether  they  are  credible  ;  and  now  in 
literary  interpretation,  whether  they  can  be  resolved  into 
myths  or  allegories,  the  records  of  misunderstood  events  or 
of  marvellous  coincidences,  or  must  be  construed  as  authentic 
narratives.  But  the  problems  they  raise  are  religious  and 
ethical  as  well  as  philosophical  and  historical,  and,  \ve  may 
add,  the  former  are  profounder  and  more  determinative  than 
the  latter.  Here  we  shall  be  concerned  with  the  acts  as  an 
undesigned  exegesis  of  the  person,  the  t\vn  being  so  related 
as  to  be  complementary  and  mutually  explanatory  ;  in  other 
words,  the  acts  when  construed  through  the  person  become 
intelligible,  while  the  person  interpreted  through  the  acts 
grows  more  articulate  and  coherent,  conformed  in  being  to 
1 1  is  place  in  history. 

33' 


332    ACTS    AND   CHARACTER   CORRESPOND 


§  I.     A   Sane  Supernaturalism 

I.  What  we  have  to  study,  then,  is  the  representation  of  a 
supernatural  person  in  an  historical  framework  ;  i.e.  we  have 
to  study,  in  a  literary  medium  which  is  amenable  to  the  fixed 
canons  of  criticism,  a  Being  who  transcends  nature  even  while 
He  lives  under  the  forms  and  subject  to  the  conditions  of  the 
nature  He  transcends.  Now,  the  first  thing  we  have  here 
to  note  is  this  : — The  miraculous  acts  which  are  ascribed  to 
Jesus  have  qualities  which  curiously  correspond  to  His  char- 
acter, or,  in  other  words,  they  so  duplicate  and  reflect  it  that 
the  moral  attributes  which  are  most  distinctive  of  Him  re- 
appear in  His  acts.  Where  they  seem  most  supernatural 
they  most  completely  externalize  His  nature.  The  common 
quality  which  distinguishes  them  all  may  be  described  as 
sanity  or  sobriety.  Those  acts  which  we  term  miraculous  are 
yet  not  marvellous ;  they  do  not  move  in  the  region  of  the 
weird  or  the  uncanny,  nor  do  they,  like  the  feats  of  the  witch, 
strike  with  fear,  or,  like  the  tricks  of  the  wizard  or  magician, 
smite  with  surprise.  There  is  nothing  so  alien  to  the  feeling 
of  the  Gospels  as  the  love  of  wonders  for  wonders'  sake. 
This  is  the  more  remarkable  as  the  religious  imagination, 
when  allowed  to  work  freely  in  the  region  of  the  supernatural, 
does  not  work  sanely.  The  mythical  miracle,  as  a  rule, 
reflects  a  morbid  temper,  for  it  is  commonly  the  creation  of  a 
fancy  grown  fantastic  and  even  childish.  As  genius  is  closely 
allied  to  madness,  so  there  are  types  of  piety  near  akin  to 
disease.  The  temper  is  permanent,  but  the  forms  it  loves 
vary  from  age  to  age,  though  they  all  have  a  common 
character.  The  morbid  temper,  in  our  age  and  country, 
has  no  temptation  to  dream  of  miracles,  but  it  may  dream 
of  things  quite  as  mythical  and  unreal.  In  Liddon's  Life  of 
the  late  Dr.  Pusey,  a  book  marked  by  rare  truth  and  candour, 
there  is  a  very  painful  yet  illuminative  chapter  dealing  with 


THE  MYTHICAL  IMAGINATION  UNHEALTHY  333 

his  personal  attitude  to  "  penitence  and  confession."  1     It  in- 
troduces us   to  the  innermost,  and   in  some   aspects  the   most 
secret,  chamber  of  his  soul,  where  understanding  is  difficult 
and  misjudgment  easy.     There  is  nothing  that  so  reveals  the 
moral  quality  of  a  man  as  his  sense  of  sin,  and  nothing  that 
even  his  bosom  friend    can  so    little  comprehend  and  share. 
It  is  a  sense  so  commanding  that  it  will  not  be  reasoned  with, 
and  must  be  appeased  before  the  man  can  know  peace.     But 
it  is   a  thing  infinitely  varied  in  form,  and  it  is  the  form   it 
assumes  which  shows  the  intrinsic  character  of  the  man.     Now 
the  sense  of  sin  in  Pusey  was  more  sensuous  than  spiritual, 
more  a  matter  for  himself  to  bear  than  for  grace  to  remove.    It 
harassed  him  more  than  the  sense  of  God  comforted  him,  and 
so  he  felt  as  one  who  must  express  his  conscious  desert  of  ill  in 
pains  and  penances.     Hence  it  was  as  "  an  unnamed  penitent  " 
that  he  built  a  church  at  Leeds.      His  suspension  in  1843,  n^s 
wife's  death  and  his  daughter's,  his  public  anxieties  and  private 
sorrows,  he  regarded  as  "punishments  for  his  sins."     He  im- 
plored Keble  to  act  as  his  father  confessor,  and  he  confessed 
himself  "scarred  all  over  and  seamed  with  sin,"  "a  monster" 
to  himself;  he  loathed  himself;  he  felt  as  if  he  were  "  covered 
with  leprosy  from  head  to  foot."      He  begged   for  "  a  rule  of 
penitential   discipline";  he  wore  "haircloth"  next  his  skin; 
he  scourged   himself;  he  resolved  to  "  use  a  hard  seat  by  day 
and  a  hard  bed  by  night"  ;  "not  to  wear  gloves  or  protect  his 
hands";   "never  to  notice  anything  unpleasant  in  what  was 
set  on  the  table,  but  to  take  it  by  preference  and  in  a  peniten- 
tial  spirit"  ;   "to  drink  cold  water  at  dinner,  as  only  fit  to  be 
where  there  is  not  a  drop  to  cool  this  flame"  ;  "  never  to  look 
at  beauty  of  nature    without  inward  confession  of  unworthi- 
ness."      Xow  to  lay  on  these  sayings,  heavy  as  they  are  with 
the   passion   of  unspeakable  grief,  a   cold    and   analytic    hand 
would  be  both  cruel  and  profane;   but  what  they  illustrate  is 
the  morbid  as  distinguished   from  the  moral  in  the  sense  of 
1   Vol.  iii.  chap.  iv.  pp.  94-111. 


334     THE    MODERATION   OF   THE   GOSPELS 

sin,  i.e.  the  feeling  that  it  is  something  that  can  be  satisfied  by 
physical  penance,  and  not  solely  by  the  infinite  grace  of  God. 
But  where  this  morbid  sense  is,  a  sane  imagination  is  sure  to 
be  afar  off;  the  view  of  self  supplies  the  colour  under  which 
we  see  the  universe,  and  to  an  imagination  so  possessed 
strange  dreams  and  unwholesome  fancies  easily  become  sub- 
stantial things.  In  a  credulous  age  it  creates  miraculous 
marvels,  as  easily  as  it  creates  in  a  rational  and  sceptical  age 
forms  of  penance. 

This  morbid  consciousness,  then,  is  the  real  mythical 
faculty,  and  the  miracles  it  generates  are  even  as  it  is.  In 
certain  men  and  times  it  becomes  the  veritable  master  of 
the  mind.  The  more  ethical  the  religious  imagination  is,  it 
is  the  more  sane  ;  but  in  the  very  degree  that  it  is  sensuous 
it  is  fantastic,  and  is  certain  to  people  history  with  creations 
which  mirror  and  echo  its  own  hopes  and  fears.  We  have 
only  to  turn  to  ecclesiastical  history  to  find  examples  innumer- 
able of  the  miracles  the  mythical  faculty  invents,  unconsciously, 
of  course,  though  all  the  more  in  obedience  to  its  own  laws. 
Thus,  if  we  compare  with  the  Gospels  Jerome's  Life  of 
Hilarion  or  the  Four  Dialogues  of  Gregory  the  Great,  the 
difference  bet\veen  sobriety  and  extravagance  in  narratives 
concerning  the  miraculous  will  soon  become  evident.  The 
one  is  the  most  learned  of  all  the  Fathers,  the  other  is  the 
most  sagacious  of  the  early  Popes  ;  and  so  far  as  the  culture 
that  comes  of  letters  and  affairs,  or  knowledge  and  experi- 
ence, are  concerned,  they  are  both  incomparably  superior  to 
the  Evangelists.  Well,  then,  Jerome  gravely  narrates  such 
things  as  these:  how  Hilarion  by  his  prayers  made  a  barren 
woman  to  bear  ;  how  a  certain  Italicus,  whose  horses  raced  in 
the  circus,  prayed  the  saint  to  give  him,  since  he  was  a  Christ- 
ian, a  victory  over  his  heathen  rival,  and  how,  by  water  out 
of  the  cup  from  which  he  used  to  drink,  the  horses  of  Italicus 
were  made  to  flee  to  the  goal,  while  those  of  his  competitor 
stuck  fast  to  the  spot ;  how  the  saint  casts  out  a  lascivious  devil 


EXTRAVAGANCE  OF  JEROME  AND  GREGORY  335 

from  a  maid  who  had  been  bewitched  by  certain  magic  figures 
and  formulas  buried  beneath  the  threshold  of  her  house  ; 
how  he  dispossessed  of  another  devil  a  gigantic  camel,  which 
thirty  men  with  strong  ropes  could  hardly  hold  ;  how  he  com- 
manded a  mighty  serpent,  which  had  been  devouring  oxen,  to 
ascend  a  pyre  and  be  burned  to  ashes  before  all  the  people  ; 
how,  months  after  his  death,  his  body  was  conveyed  from 
Cyprus  to  Palestine  as  perfect  as  if  alive,  and  fragrant  with 
sweet  odours  ;  and  how  at  the  places  alike  where  he  had  been 
and  where  he  was  buried  great  miracles  were  daily  performed, 
in  the  one  case  as  it  were  by  his  body,  in  the  other  by  his 
spirit.  Gregory's  miracles  are  even  more  marvellous  than 
those  described  by  Jerome,  for  he  tells  how  certain  of  his 
Italian  fathers  or  monks  could  treat  the  water  as  if  it  had 
been  solid  land  ;  how  pieces  of  gold,  fresh  as  from  the  mint, 
fell  upon  them  from  heaven  ;  how  floods  which  rose  even  to 
the  roofs  of  churches  did  not  enter  in  at  the  doors,  though 
they  stood  open  ;  how  the  arm  of  an  executioner,  uplifted  to 
strike  off  a  monk's  head,  remained  erect  and  fixed,  sword  and 
all,  in  the  air,  but  power  over  it  was  restored  on  the  promise 
being  made  never  again  to  use  it  against  a  Christian.  And  as 
here,  so  always  ;  for  the  creations  of  the  mythical  faculty  are 
everywhere  curiously  akin.  The  mediaeval  friar  would  tell 
his  hearers  how  a  robber,  who  had  been  always  devout  and 
regular  in  his  prayers  to  the  Virgin,  was  at  length  taken  and 
sentenced  to  be  hanged  ;  but  when  the  cord  was  round  his 
neck  he  prayed  to  his  heavenly  patroness,  and  she,  with  her 
own  white  hands,  held  him  up  two  whole  days,  and  so  saved 
him  from  death  :  or  how  a  paper  of  Scriptural  proofs  which 
the  good  St.  Dominic  had  written  to  confound  his  opponents, 
leaped  out  of  the  fire  into  which  it  had  been  cast,  while  their 
documents  remained  and  were  utterly  consumed.  The  Bud- 
dhist monk,  illustrating  the  benevolence  of  the  Master,  would 
tell  how  in  an  earlier  mode  of  existence  he  had  met  a  famished 
tiger,  and,  pitying  the  hungry  beast,  had  kindly  offered  him- 


336      JESUS    AN    EMBODIED    BENEFICENCE 

self  as  a  meal  ;  or  how,  regretting  that  his  people  had  no  fit 
image  of  himself,  he  appeared  as  a  poor  workman,  carved  the 
image,  and  vanished  from  the  sight  of  those  who  would  have 
rewarded  him.  The  mythical  faculty  speaks  in  all  the  lan- 
guages of  man,  but  the  thing  itself  we  can  never  mistake  for 
reality  :  its  very  features  show  whence  it  has  come. 

2.  If  now  we  compare  the  miracles  of  the  Gospels  with 
these,  we  shall  understand  what  is  meant  by  their  sanity  or 
sobriety.  They  have  a  sort  of  natural  character,  and  are 
neither  violent  nor  abnormal ;  like  Jesus  Himself,  they  are, 
though  supernatural,  not  contra-natural.  For  what  are  the 
miraculous  acts  ascribed  to  Him  ?  He  heals  the  blind,  the 
halt,  the  lame,  the  sick  of  the  palsy  ;  He  brings  comfort  to 
the  widow  who  has  lost  a  son,  to  the  Gentile  nobleman  who 
mourns  a  child  ;  He  creates  joy  in  the  heart  of  the  woman 
who  had  sought  counsel  of  many  physicians  and  only  grew 
the  worse  for  all  their  attempts  at  healing.  He  goes  through 
life  like  a  kind  of  embodied  beneficence,  creating  health  and 
happiness.  He  incorporates  the  energies  that  work  against 
physical  evil  and  for  social  good.  In  a  sense,  His  miracles 
are  but  the  transcripts  of  His  character,  the  symbol  of  His 
mind  and  mission.  Were  we  to  imagine  an  incorporated 
grace  or  mercy,  should  we  not  conceive  her  path  marked  by 
similar  deeds  ?  These  miracles  are,  in  a  word,  the  physical 
counterparts  of  Christ's  moral  character  and  ethical  teachings. 
Without  them  our  picture  of  His  personality  would  be  incom- 
plete. They  show  Him  as  the  enemy  of  disease,  of  bodily 
imperfection  and  suffering,  as  a  factor  of  the  outer  conditions 
that  make  for  happiness.  Without  them  our  image  of  Him 
would  be  incomplete,  while  their  singular  freedom  from  the 
qualities  everywhere  characteristic  of  the  mythical  miracle 
place  them  in  a  category  by  themselves.  One  thing  is 
certain  :  they  could  not  have  owed  their  freedom  from  these 
customary  mythical  adornments  to  the  Evangelists  them- 
selves. For  they  were  men  who  stood  alike  as  regards  age, 


INTELLECTUAL   SANITY  OF   EVANGELISTS  337 

culture,  and  country,  exactly  at  the  stage  when  we  expect 
the  mythical  consciousness  to  be  creative ;  their  material 
may  have  come  to  them  in  forms  and  under  conditions 
favourable  to  its  exercise,  but  yet  the  miracles  they  describe 
have  this  altogether  exceptional  character  of  moral  sanity 
and  rational  sobriety.  It  were  indeed  the  simple  truth 
to  say  that  the  Evangelists  are  the  most  modern  writers 
of  Christian  antiquity  ;  and  we  may  add,  without  fear  of 
contradiction,  that  with  the  most  absolute  and  august  idea 
of  the  supernatural  to  be  found  in  the  whole  literature  of 
religion,  they  have  given  it  an  expression  so  objective  and 
realistic  as  to  be  without  any  parallel.  If  we  compare  them 
with  Fathers  like  Tertullian  writing  on  the  "  Spectacles,"  or 
describing  the  nature  and  ways  of  wicked  spirits  ;  or  with 
works  like  those  of  Athanasius  on  Antony  ;  or  Gregory  of 
Nyssa  on  his  namesake  of  Neo-Caesarea  ;  or  with  Augustine 
telling  miracles  he  himself  had  witnessed  ;  or  Sulpicius  naively 
narrating  those  worked  by  Martin  of  Tours,  we  shall  come  to 
the  conclusion  that  our  Gospels  are  remarkable,  above  all  other 
ancient  Christian  histories,  for  critical  caution  and  intellectual 
sanity.  Is  it  too  bold  an  inference  to  argue  that  the  very 
magnitude  of  their  subject  had  susperseded  in  the  Evangelists 
the  creative  activity  of  the  morbid  and  mythical  imagination  ? 

§   II.      The  Physical  Transcendence  is  Moral  Obedience 

I.  But  a  still  more  distinctive  quality  of  the  supernatural 
action  ascribed  to  Jesus  is  its  altruistic  character.  His  miracles 
do  not  regard  Himself.  This  quality  is  all  the  more  significant 

O  J  O 

that  the  Evangelists  themselves  seem  hardly  conscious  of  its 
existence.  It  is  implicit  in  their  narratives  rather  than  ex- 
plicit in  their  thought ;  but,  while  unexplicated,  it  is  a  most 
integral  element  of  their  history.  Thus  it  comes  out  quite 
distinctly  in  the  Temptation,  which,  we  may  assume,  repre- 
sents a  series  of  events  whose  importance  lies  in  their  being 

P.C.R.  22 


338  THE  TEMPTATION  A  SUBJECTIVE  PROCESS 

the  symbols  of  a  subjective  process.  It  stands  at  the  thres- 
hold of  the  ministry,  i.e.  just  when  the  consciousness  of  His 
mission  had  become  clear  and  imperative  to  Jesus  ;  and  it 
describes  the  crisis  as  more  moral  than  intellectual,  or  as 
due  to  His  struggle  with  conflicting  ideals.  The  greater  the 
mission  the  more  certain  it  is  to  present  alternative  policies 
expressing  incommensurable  principles  ;  and  what  is  tempta- 
tion but  the  struggle  of  the  conscience  in  favour  of  the  more 
ethical  and  against  the  more  expedient  policy  ? 

If  we  assume,  then,  that  what  is  so  named  represents  a 
real  experience,  a  transaction  within  the  soul  of  Jesus,  what 
would  be  its  natural  sources  or  factors  ? 

(a)  There  would  be  the  question  of  His  place  in  nature, 
His  power  over  it,  its  power  over  Him,  especially  as  affecting 
His  relation  to  men  and  the  work  He  had  to  do  on  their 
behalf.  This  is  the  point  which  is  emphasized  in  the  first 
temptation  :  "  make  these  stones  bread."  l  If  this  be  read  in 
the  light  of  His  later  history,  what  does  it  mean?  Simply 
this  :  '  Do  for  yourself  what  you  know  that  you  have  power 
to  do  for  others  ;  the  energies  with  which  you  are  entrusted 
will  be  best  disciplined  for  the  service  of  all  by  being  first 
exercised  in  your  own.  What  it  is  right  to  do  for  those 
who  need  redemption,  it  cannot  be  wrong  to  do  for  their 
Redeemer.  You  are  to  feed  the  hungry  ;  begin  by  feeding 
yourself.  Your  own  physical  fitness  for  the  work  you  are 
intended  to  do  ought  surely  to  be  a  primary  care.' 

Now  why  should  this  suggestion  have  appeared  as  a  temp- 
tation? Does  it  not  rather  seem  like  the  recognition  of  a 
fact ;  to  wit,  the  pre-eminence  which  endowed  Jesus  with 
special  means  for  the  preservation  of  life,  particularly  His 
own  ?  We  may  assume,  in  accordance  with  all  human 
experience,  that  the  potentialities  in  Him  and  the  possibilities 
latent  in  His  career  would  make  their  appeal  to  His  imagina- 

1  Matt.  iv.  3  ;  Luke  iv.  3.  The  order  in  which  the  temptations  are 
taken  is  Matthew's,  not  Luke's. 


ITS    ETHICAL   SIGNIFICANCE  339 

tion  first  in  a  purely  personal  form.  But  here  the  appeal  is 
shown  to  have  been  made  only  to  be  dismissed  as  if  it  were 
a  suggestion  of  the  devil.  "  Man,"  Jesus  says,  "  does  not 
live  by  bread  alone."  That  is,  He  recoils  from  the  temptation 
to  affirm  the  pre-eminence  of  His  person  by  supernatural 
energy  expended  on  Himself;  for  if  He  had  performed  such 
an  act  on  His  own  behalf,  it  would  have  signified  that  He 
took  Himself  out  of  the  category  of  manhood  ;  that  He 
surrendered  the  act  of  sacrifice ;  and  it  would  have  declared 
that  His  function  was  not  to  practise  obedience,  but  to 
exercise  personal  power.  In  other  words,  He  would  have 
removed  Himself  from  the  ranks  of  the  created  who  live  under 
nature,  and  through  it  depend  upon  the  Creator  ;  and  He 
would  have  relegated  Himself  to  a  special  dignity  where 
physical  law  ceased  to  reign,  i.e.  He  would  have  translated 
His  work  into  the  assertion  rather  than  the  sacrifice  of  Him- 
self. He  would  also  have  separated  Himself  from  man,  have 
ceased  to  be  like  unto  His  brethren,  have  refused  to  share  the 
common  lot,  and  instead  have  preferred  the  solitary  state  of  a 
being  beyond  and  above  it.  But  it  would  have  affected  His 
relation  to  God  even  more  than  His  relation  to  man  ;  for 
He  would,  by  ceasing  to  be  dependent  upon  Him,  have 
become,  in  a  sense,  God  to  Himself,  and  so  the  precise  con- 
trary of  man  in  his  dependence  upon  God.  The  very  root 
out  of  which  religion  grows  would  thus  have  been  eradicated 
in  Him  ;  and  He  would  have  fallen  from  1 1  is  high  estate  as 
the  normal  type  of  the  soul's  relation  to  God,  and  of  God's 
to  the  soul. 

(/5)  If,  then,  "man  liveth  not  by  bread  alone,  but  by  the 
word  which  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  God,"  it  follows 
that  not  otherwise  than  by  this  word  did  it  become  the  Son 
of  man  to  live.  The  first  temptation  thus  represents  the 
conflict  of  the  ideal  of  dependence  with  the  ideal  of  pre- 
eminence, or  the  law  of  an  ordinary  with  the  privileges 
of  an  extraordinary  manhood.  The  second  stands  for  an 


340  AS    MAN    DEPENDENT   ON   GOD 

exactly  opposite  conflict — that  of  a  reasonable  against  a  blind 
dependence.  "  Cast  Thyself  down,"  it  says,  "  from  this  pin- 
nacle of  the  temple ;  for  it  is  written,  '  He  shall  give  His 
angels  charge  concerning  Thee  :  and  on  their  hands  shall 
they  bear  Thee  up,  lest  haply  Thou  dash  Thy  foot  against  a 
stone.'  " l  This  may  be  said  to  express  the  sense  of  depend- 
ence turned  into  sheer  presumption,  challenging  God  to 
exercise  sole  care  for  His  Son,  and  to  make  immediate  inter- 
vention in  His  interest.  It  is  as  if  the  tempter  had  said  :  "  If 
You  will  renounce  all  power  for  personal  ends,  and  refuse  to 
act  as  Your  own  Providence;  if  You  have  resolved  to  live  as 
one  who  knows  Himself  to  be  always  and  everywhere  in  the 
hands  of  the  Almighty, — then  prove  Your  august  eminency 
and  the  sufficiency  of  Your  faith  by  throwing  Yourself  from 
this  height  into  the  court  below,  so  forcing  God  to  intervene 
directly  on  Your  behalf.  By  so  doing  You  will  dispose  men 
to  expect  great  things  of  You,  and  to  repose  great  trust  in 
you.  And  I  will  add,  that  only  such  absolute  trust  is  worthy 
of  the  Son  of  God  ;  and  only  by  such  absolute  Providence 
would  the  Father  be  fitly  declared." 

The  ideal  is  thus  a  confidence  in  God  so  absolute  as  to 
have  become  contempt  of  nature.  But  what  is  the  answer  of 
Jesus  to  this  second  suggestion  ?  "  Thou  shalt  not  tempt  the 
Lord  thy  God."  And  what  did  this  answer  mean?  Simply 
this — that  if  He  had  dealt  with  Himself  as  if  He  were  an 
exceptional  and  pre-eminent  object  of  divine  care,  two  things 
would  have  followed  :  first,  His  complete  isolation  from  man, 
who  holds  his  being  under  physical  as  well  as  moral  law, 
and  is  bound  at  every  moment  and  in  all  things  to  deal  with 
the  physical  as  if  it  were  the  moral  ;  and,  secondly,  He  would 
have  substituted  for  a  life  environed  by  nature,  guarded, 
guided,  fed  by  it,  participant  in  its  forces  because  subject 
to  its  laws,  a  life  divorced  from  nature,  hostile  to  it,  finding 
in  it  no  presence  of  God,  realizing  through  it  no  fellowship 
1  Man  iv.  5-7  ;  Luke  iv.  9-12. 


ETHICAL   IN    MEANS    AS    IN    END          341 

with  man,  inheriting  nothing  from  its  past,  bequeathing 
nothing  to  fts  future.  The  temptation  thus,  under  the  dis- 
guise of  honour  to  God,  aimed  at  alienation  alike  from  Him 
and  from  the  fellowship  of  man. 

(7)  The  third  temptation  is  a  subtle  combination  of  elements 
derived  from  the  other  two.1  It  means  that  He  may  by 
the  use  of  physical  and  unethical  forces  obtain  the  mastery 
over  the  kingdoms  of  the  world.  In  other  words,  it  signifies 
that  a  person  who  has  pre-eminent  power  ought  to  exercise 
the  power  he  has  without  regard  to  God,  or  to  the  rights  and 
the  souls  of  men.  And  if  God  be  regarded,  it  ought  to  be 
only  so  far  as  He  may  be  a  factor,  more  or  less  efficient, 
for  some  personal  end ;  or,  if  man  be  helped,  it  will  not 
matter  though  his  soul  be  soiled,  his  conscience  perverted, 
and  his  will  enfeebled  and  depraved  in  the  process.  The 
ideal  that  stands  opposed  to  this  affirms  that  God  is  the 
only  being  man  ought  to  worship ;  and  that  He  can  be 
worshipped  only  in  a  spirit  and  way  that  at  once  glorifies 
Him  and  exalts  man. 

If,  then,  the  experience  so  picturesquely  presented  in  the 
temptation  has  been  correctly  read,  we  may  express  its 
meaning  thus : — The  supernatural  potencies  which  move 
within  Jesus  leave  Him  neither  an  extra-  nor  a  contra-  nor 
a  prater-natural  person,  but  a  person  to  Himself  and  for 
Himself  strictly  and  surely  natural,  with  powers  which  are 
to  be  understood  and  used  as  means  to  ethical  and  altruistic 
ends,  to  increase  the  duty  of  obedience,  to  limit  rather  than 
enlarge  the  sphere  of  man's  independence  of  God. 

2.  Hut  the  Temptation  is  so  significant  because  it  is  the 
pictorial  embodiment  of  ideas  which  rise  spontaneously  in 
the  mind  whenever  man  thinks  of  one  possessed  of  super- 
natural power.  They  are  ideas  which  Jesus  1  limself  must 
have  conceived,  if  not  entertained  ;  and  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
they  are  the  very  ideas  which  prompted  questions  He  was 
1  Matt.  iv.  8-io  ;  Luke  iv.  5-8. 


342   TEMPTATION  CONTINUOUS  AND  SIGNIFIES 

required  to  answer,  criticisms  He  had  to  bear,  and  even  the 
mockery  and  bitter  taunts  which  insulted  Him  on  the  cross. 
Thus  "  Let  Him  save  Himself,  if  this  is  the  Christ  of  God, 
His  chosen,"1  is  just  a  variation  of  the  tempter's  words,  "  If 
Thou  art  the  Son  of  God,  command  that  these  stones  be- 
come bread."  Again,  "  He  trusteth  in  God,  let  Him  deliver 
Him  now  if  He  desireth  Him,"2  simply  repeats  "If  Thou 
art  the  Son  of  God,  cast  Thyself  down."  "  Let  the  Christ, 
the  King  of  Israel,  now  come  down  from  the  cross  that  we 
may  see  and  believe,"3  is  only  a  changed  reading  of  the 
temptation  that  promised  Him  the  world's  dominion  if  He 
would  use  the  world's  power.  This  priestly  and  popular 
scorn,  then,  may  express  the  selfishness  of  a  nature  which  has 
forsaken  and  forgotten  God,  but  it  does  not  at  all  represent 
Christ's  mind  or  will.  It  was  man  explaining  Jesus  by 
himself,  showing  by  a  process  of  unconscious  imputation 
what  he  himself  would  be  and  do  were  it  only  granted  to 
him  to  be  the  Christ. 

In  His  whole  life,  then,  and  in  all  His  actions  Jesus 
exercised  His  power  always  and  only  for  man.  The 
mystery  of  the  life  which  so  appealed  to  the  heart  and 
imagination  of  His  people  lies  here — with  the  power  to 
save  He  yet  wills  to  lose  Himself.  The  vision  of  God 
which  He  creates  brings  to  man  beatitude  ;  the  vision  of 
sin  which  He  suffers  brings  to  Himself  sorrow.  The  strength 
of  His  will  is  seen  not  in  any  immunity  from  calamity 
which  He  commands,  but  in  the  sacrifice  He  makes.  And 
this  touches  a  specific  and  distinctive  quality  of  the  super- 
natural element  in  the  Gospels.  There  is  nothing  like  it 
in  the  mythology  of  the  miraculous.  The  mythical  miracle 
is  primarily  personal ;  for  what  could  be  the  use  of  a  super- 
natural power  which  did  not  serve  its  possessor  in  his  own 
hour  of  need  ?  Among  the  founders  of  great  religions  no  life 

1  Luke  xxiii.  35.  2  Matt,  xxvii.  43. 

3  Mark  xv.  32  ;  Matt,  xxvii.  42. 


THAT   JESUS    IS    MEASURED    BY    MAN     343 

is  freer  from  mythical  wonders  than  Mohammed's  ;  but  when 
they  appeaf,  it  is  in  his  interest  Thus  we  are  told  that  the 
Prophet,  when  fleeing  from  Mecca,  was  hotly  pursued  by  his 
foes.  He  took  refuge  in  a  cave,  but  as  soon  as  he  had 
entered  it  God  sent  a  spider,  which  wove  its  web  over  the 
cave's  mouth.  His  pursuers,  who  were  close  behind,  stopped, 
intending  to  enter  ;  but  when  they  saw  the  spider's  web,  they 
said,  "  He  cannot  have  entered  here,  for  this  great  web  could 
not  have  been  so  quickly  woven "  ;  and  so  they  rode  on, 
leaving  the  Prophet  to  escape  out  of  their  hands.  The  tale 
has  in  the  myths  of  all  religions  many  fellows ;  for  it  is 
Nature  herself  which  bids  men  think  that  he  who  has  been 
endowed  with  extraordinary  power  will  exercise  it  first  on 
his  own  behalf,  and  only  as  a  secondary  purpose  on  behalf  of 
man.  But  Jesus  from  first  to  last,  in  all  His  acts  and  in  all 
His  doings,  is  supernatural  on  man's  behalf  and  not  on  His 
own.  He  was  a  moral  wonder  rather  than  a  physical  marvel. 

§   III.      Supernatural  Poiver  as  a  Moral  Burden 

But  there  is  a  third  aspect  under  which  the  super- 
natural power  which  the  Evangelists  ascribed  to  Jesus  must 
be  viewed,  viz.,  in  its  bearing  on  His  own  moral  character  and 
on  1 1  is  moral  relations  with  men. 

I.  If  we  consider  it  under  the  first  aspect,  we  shall  see 
that  there  could  be  no  more  tremendous  gift ;  for  it  would 
be,  under  the  ordinary  laws  that  govern  human  nature,  a 
power  working  for  immorality.  Under  the  most  favourable 
conditions  it  would  tax  self-control  to  a  degree  that  no 
moral  will  known  to  us  could  bear.  To  measure  its  strength, 
we  may  compare  it  with  forces  that  lie  within  our  own 
experience  or  that  have  acted  upon  the  stage  of  history. 

The  power  which  men  may  not  challenge  and  cannot  re- 
sist tends  always  to  deprave  and  even  brutalize  its  possessor. 
Without  the  criticism  of  men,  man  would  have  to  suffer  from 
the  unqualified  action  of  mischievous  moral  influences.  The 


344      ABSOLUTE    POWER   DEPRAVES    MAN 

man  who  feels  above  the  law  for  himself,  while  he  is  the 
source  of  the  law  which  distributes  life  and  death  to  other 
men,  has  in  his  own  passions  and  ambitions  tempters  which 
beguile  him  into  forgetfulness  of  all  the  fair  humanities. 
Flatterers  surround  him,  and  where  man  never  has  the  truth 
spoken  to  him  by  men  he  easily  comes  to  act  like  a  devil, 
for  he  feels  so  like  a  god.  To  be  able  to  command  and  to 
compel  obedience  to  his  commandments  while  under  no 
compulsion  to  obey  them  himself,  is  an  attitude  ruinous  to 
a  nature  which  was  designed  to  be  made  perfect  through 
obedience,  and  to  learn  it  through  feeling  dependent.  Neigh- 
bourliness,  fellowship,  is  needful  to  humanity ;  and  if  by 
undue  elevation  or  depression  we  are  denied  it,  we  are  certain 
to  suffer  moral  disaster.  And  so  social  extremes  meet ;  the 
worst  crimes  are  tc  be  found  among  those  who  are  either  at 
the  very  top  or  at  the  very  bottom  of  society.  It  is  a  grave 
and  a  terrible  fact  that  in  the  long  catalogue  of  Roman 
emperors  we  have  only  one  Marcus  Antoninus,  and  even  he, 
though  a  saint,  was  not  tolerant  of  saintliness  ;  but  we  have  a 
multitude  who  do  more  disgrace  than  honour  to  mankind — • 
men  like  Tiberius  and  Caligula,  like  Nero  or  Domitian. 
Roman  order  might  be  a  great  thing  for  the  Roman  popula- 
tion ;  but  it  too  often  involved  the  moral  sacrifice  of  the  men 
who  were  its  nominal  guardians.  The  imperial  family  which 
stands  in  Europe  for  the  purest  form  of  autocratic  power, 
shows  also  the  most  dismal  examples  of  moral  madness. 
The  house  of  Romanoff  has,  above  all  other  sovereign  houses, 
been  stained  by  the  uncleanliest  vices, — crimes  explicable  only 
through  the  insanity  which  seizes  those  who  may  command 
others,  but  who  go  uncommanded  themselves.  The  most 
pitiful  victim  of  despotism  is  the  despot ;  for  while  his  power 
may,  like  a  glacier,  grind  and  pulverize  the  rock  in  which  he 
makes  his  bed  and  through  which  he  forces  his  way,  yet 
he  himself  is  like  the  deadly  ice  which  can  never  know  the 
presence  of  kindly  and  beautiful  life. 


UNLESS    HE    BE    AS   GOOD    AS    GOD        345 

But  now  let  us  apply  the  principle  which  we  have  thus 
derived  from  experience  and  history  to  a  person  who  is 
believed  to  possess  supernatural  power,  and  who  believes 
himself  to  possess  it.  Such  power  would  be  a  more 
dangerous  possession,  a  heavier  burden  for  self-restraint  to 
bear,  a  vaster  force  for  wisdom  to  direct,  than  would  the 
most  absolute  political  autocracy.  The  character  of  the 
man  who  had  it  would  be  more  severely  tried  than  were 
he  penetrated  by  transmitted  passions  or  enervated  by 
acquired  lusts.  For  were  he  a  being  of  fine  nature,  would 
he  not,  when  confronted  by  the  infinite  meanness  of  men, 
their  duplicity,  their  insensibility  to  the  higher  ideals, 
their  avarice,  their  selfish  greed,  be  ever,  under  the  pro- 
vocation of  a  noble  rage,  tempted  to  execute  upon  them 
the  swiftest  vengeance?  If  he  saw  oppression  victorious 
and  freedom  lying  wounded  and  broken  under  its  hoof,  or 
if  he  heard  lust  vaunting  the  chastity  it  had  violated  and 
falsehood  triumphing  over  the  truth  it  had  betrayed,  how 
could  he  resist  the  impulse  which  bade  him  become  the  sword 
of  God  ?  But  what  is  the  justice  that  proceeds  from  impulse 
save  a  form  of  self-indulgence?  And  does  not  a  moral  in- 
dignation which  is  ever  indulged,  easily  become  a  vengeance 
that  will  not  be  satiated  ?  Such  a  power  would  therefore 
inevitably  tend  to  disturb  the  balance  or  sobriety  of  the 
moral  nature  ;  and  unless  he  who  possessed  it  had  a  will  so 
absolutely  under  moral  control  as  to  be  proof  against  the 
tides  and  tempests  of  moral  passion,  he  would  soon  become 
the  victim  of  the  thousand  immoral  forces  that  act  upon 
spirit  through  sense.  We  may  say,  then,  that  only  a  being 
absolutely  God-like  in  his  goodness  could  be  equal  to  the 
control  of  so  awful  and  so  tremendous  a  power. 

Were,  then,  any  being  less  than  infinite  in  wisdom,  right- 
eousness, and  grace  to  be  invested  with  omnipotence,  his 
might  would  soon  overmaster  his  morality  and  turn  him  into 
the  most  unspeakable  of  devils.  For  \\hat  would  ungoverned 


346     POWER    DOES    NOT   DEPRAVE    JESUS 

power  in  command  of  the  universe  be  but  Satan  upon  the 
throne  of  the  Almighty  ?  And  were  he,  though  only  for  a 
moment,  to  sit  there,  the  devil  transformed  into  an  omni- 
potent god,  would  he  not  undo  the  work  of  eternity  and 
reduce  the  universe  to  a  chaos  which  would  be  a  universe 
no  more  ?  Omnipotence  without  divine  goodness  would 
become  a  force  working  simply  for  destruction.  The  oppor- 
tunity to  use  a  might  none  can  question  needs  for  its  control 
a  goodness  none  can  doubt.  And  what  have  we  in  the 
Gospels?  The  picture  of  a  will  uncorrupted  by  power,, 
untempted  by  opportunity,  beneficent  in  the  exercise  of  the 
mysterious  energy  with  which  it  was  charged.  Jesus  lives 
His  open  and  frank  and  natural  life  as  simply  as  the  child 
who  takes  no  thought  for  to-morrow  because  he  is  in  the 
hands  of  one  who  thinks  for  him.  And  so  He  dwells  in 
our  imagination  as  obedient,  humble,  gentle,  and  easily 
entreated,  never  as  the  Master  of  the  mysterious  forces  which 
rule  nature. 

2.  But  now  the  second  aspect  of  the  matter — its  effect 
upon  His  moral  relations  with  men — must  also  be  considered. 
How  would  men  be  affected  by  seejng  a  man  possessed  of 
what  they  thought  supernatural  power  ?  We  know  how 
terrible  a  thing  witchcraft  seemed  in  the  days  when  people 
believed  in  its  existence.  The  witch  was  a  person  to  whom 
men  showed  no  mercy  ;  their  fear  became  a  frenzy  which  no- 
thing less  than  death  by  fire  or  water  could  appease.  And 
we  need  not  wonder  at  their  conduct,  for  if  we  believed  as 
our  forefathers  believed,  we  should  act  as  they  did,  possibly 
with  even  blinder  fury.  For  to  feel  that  a  given  person  has 
over  nature  a  power  we  wot  not  of,  and  can  bid  it  torment 
or  insidiously  kill  an  enemy,  undermine  the  health  of  the 
strong  or  work  vindictively  against  the  innocent,  is  to  feel  in 
the  presence  of  one  whom  common  justice  cannot  deal  with, 
for  common  laws  do  not  control ;  and,  therefore,  of  one  who 
must  be  driven  forth  from  life,  if  life  is  to  be  lived  in  peace. 


OR   ALIENATE    MAN   FROM    HIM  347 

Wherever  there  has  been  belief  in  the  ability  to  exercise 
supernatural  'power,  this  has  been  the  universal  feeling  ;  and 
if  it  has  been  tempered  at  all,  it  has  been  by  the  hope  of 
bribing  the  mysterious  person  to  use  his  power  for  the 
briber's  ends  rather  than  his  own. 

The  only  complete  exception  to  this  law  of  human  nature 
is  the  one  which  appears  in  the  Gospels.  The  recognition 
of  Christ's  miraculous  will  is  universal.  All  the  men  who 
surround  Him  believe  that  He  possesses  it  ;  they  see  Him 
exercise  it ;  they  crave,  though  they  never  attempt  to  bribe 
Him,  that  He  exercise  it  on  their  behalf.  But  here  there  is 
an  unconscious  contrast  between  the  Master  and  the  disciples, 
who,  as  the  incident  of  Simon  the  magian  shows,  could  be 
regarded  as  men  that  might  be  bribed.1  Yet  the  miracle 

o  o 

is  a  more  integral  part  of  the  evangelical  than  of  the 
apostolical  history.  The  messengers  from  John  are  bidden 
by  Jesus  to  "  tell  the  things  which  they  do  see  and  hear  : 
the  blind  receive  their  sight  and  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers 
are  cleansed  and  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised  up  and 
the  poor  have  the  gospel  preached  to  them." 2  The  cen- 
turion asks  that  his  servant  may  be  healed,3  the  sick  of  the 
palsy  are  brought  to  Him  as  He  sits  surrounded  by  His  very 
enemies.1  These  enemies  question  His  right  to  forgive  sins, 
but  not  His  power  to  heal  diseases.  They  have  indeed  a 
theory  as  to  the  sources  of  His  power — He  does  it  by 
Beelzebub,  the  prince  of  the  devils.5  But  is  not  this  the 
most  remarkable  tribute  they  could  pay  to  His  self-control? 
Would  they  have  ventured  to  attribute  to  the  devil  in  Him 
the  power  which  they  acknowledged  that  He  possessed,  if 
they  had  thought  that  His  will  was  really  devilish  ?  Would 
they  not  have  spoken  softly,  and  called  Him  by  the  gentlest 
names  they  knew,  if  the}-  had  believed  that  He  incarnated 

1  Acts  viii.  18,  19.  2  Matt.  xi.  4,  5. 

8  Luke  vii.  l-io  ;  cf.  John  iv.  46-54  ;    Mark  v.  22-24,  35~43- 

*  Mark  ii.  6-12.  5   Mark  iii.  22-30. 


348    MORAL   GREATNESS    ABOVE    MIRACLES 

malevolence  rather  than  benevolence  ?  And  this  quality  is 
illustrated  no  less  by  those  who  believe  in  the  bsneficence  of 
His  supernatural  will.  They  do  not  feel  that  it  divides  Him 
from  them  ;  they  never  distrust  Him  or  suspect  His  motives, 
or  fed  that  the  extraordinary  power  which  He  possesses  will 
be  used  for  any  other  than  a  gracious  purpose. 

It  is  thus  remarkable  that  the  terror  which  ordinarily 
follows  belief  in  demoniac  power  is,  even  when  He  is 
maliciously  credited  with  it,  here  entirely  absent.  Men  think 
Him  so  possessed  by  a  moral  will  that  they  do  not  feel 
fear  in  a  presence  they  believe  to  be  supernatural.  He  is 
even  to  His  enemies,  more  marvellous  for  the  grace  He 
impersonates  than  for  the  miracles  He  accomplishes.  And 
this  is  simply  saying  that  He  was  higher  as  a  moral  miracle 
than  as  a  physical  power.  While  the  power  may  be  great, 
the  grace  is  greater,  and  men  peacefully  trust  where  under 
other  circumstances  they  would  have  profoundly  feared. 
This  is  a  feature  in  the  evangelical  narratives  that  marks 
them  with  distinction.  The  character  which  they  portray 
is  so  morally  perfect  that  supernatural  power  can  neither 
deprave  it  nor  alienate  men  from  Him  who  possesses  it. 

§  IV.   The  History  of  the  Supernatural  Person  as  a  Problem 

in  Literature 

I.  But  there  is  a  literary  question  which  deserves  to  be 
looked  at :  the  Gospels  are  histories  which  aim  at  perform- 
ing a  most  daring  feat ;  they  bind  together  a  person  conceived 
to  be  supernatural  and  the  actual  world,  and  they  describe 
the  life  He  lived  within  it.  This  involved  literary  difficulties 
of  two  kinds  :  (a)  theological — How  were  the  extraordinary 
nature  and  relations  attributed  to  Jesus  to  affect  their  theistic 
idea  ?  and  (fr)  historical — In  what  sort  of  history  was  this 
nature  and  these  relations  to  be  unfolded  ? 

(a)  The  Evangelists  cannot  be  charged  with  possessing  a 


THE  SUPERNATURAL  PERSON  AND  DEITY  349 

mean  theistic  idea.  They  inherited  an  august  conception  of 
Deity,  the  least  anthropomorphic,  the  most  untouched  by 
human  passion,  weakness,  or  mutability,  known  to  antiquity  ; 
and  to  represent  this  God  as  the  Father  of  Jesus  without 
degrading  or  undeifying  Him,  was  a  literary  task  of  the 
rarest  delicacy  and  difficulty.  In  the  mythical  age  of 
Greece  it  had  been  easy  to  imagine  men  as  the  sons  of 
Zeus,  and  Zeus  as  the  father  of  gods  and  men  ;  but  the 
more  the  mythical  age  receded  the  more  its  crude  images 
and  grotesque  dogmas  grew  distasteful  to  the  Greek  in- 
telligence, which  refined  Deity  by  making  Him  too  abstract 
to  stand  in  real  or  concrete  relations  with  men.  And  what 
philosophy  had  done  for  Greece  the  monotheistic  passion 
did  for  Israel ;  with  the  result  that  the  more  Jehovah  was 
exalted  the  greater  became  His  distance  from  man,  and  the 
less  could  the  sons  of  God  be  conceived  as  mixing  with  the 
daughters  of  men.  The  sublimest  things  are  the  most  easily 
made  ridiculous,  the  most  sacred  can  be  most  utterly  pro- 
faned. And  if  any  one  had  been  asked  beforehand  to  de- 
scribe the  probable  action  of  the  idea  of  Jesus  as  Son  of  the 
Most  High  on  the  idea  of  God,  would  he  not  have  drawn  a 
dismal  picture  of  Majesty  lowered  into  the  dust,  spirituality 
coarsened  and  materialized,  and  reason  humbled  by  being 
carried  back  into  that  twilight  of  intelligence  when  as  yet 
gods  were  indistinguishable  from  men  ?  But  the  result  is 
exactly  the  opposite.  The  supernatural  birth  is  touched  with 
a  most  delicate  hand,  and  has  no  essential  feature  in  common 
with  the  mythical  theogonies  which  earlier  ages  had  known. 
The  marvellous  thing  is  not  that  we  have  two  birth  stories, 
but  that  we  have  only  two  ;  and  that  they  occupy  so  small, 
so  incidental,  so  almost  negligible  a  place  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment as  a  whole.  What  is  still  more  extraordinary  is  the 
mode  in  which  the  Sonship  of  Jesus  affects  the  conception 
of  God,  how  it  touches  its  majesty  with  grace,  softens  its 
rigour,  turns  its  solitude  into  society,  and  changes  it  from  a 


35QTHE  SUPERNATURAL  PERSON  AS  HISTORICAL 

dead  abstract  into  a  living  concrete.  The  Fatherhood,  which 
is  its  correlate,  made  the  God  of  the  Jews  into  the  God  of 
the  whole  earth.  The  Evangelists  so  present  Jesus  that  He 
appears  as  a  Son  so  intensely  individual  as  to  impart  a  per- 
•onality  as  concrete  as  His  own  to  the  God  He  addresses  as 
Father  ;  and  yet  as  so  truly  typical  in  His  humanity  as  to 
communicate  to  the  Father  a  universality  cognate  to  the 
manhood  He  embodies.  To  be  able  to  say  this  of  the  simple 
history  which  stands  written  in  our  Gospels,  and  to  say  it 
not  as  a  thing  probably  or  approximately  true,  but  as  true 
absolutely  and  without  any  qualification,  is  to  confess  that 
their  authors  have  performsd  a  task  of  incomparable  difficulty. 
To  give  a  human  portrait  so  gracious  as  to  exalt  and  ennoble 
our  very  idea  of  Deity,  is  a  feat  which  no  other  piece  of 
historical  literature  has  achieved  or  even  approached. 

(£)  But  the  other  literary  difficulty  may  be  described  as 
even  more  insuperable.  Jesus,  as  conceived  by  both  the 
Synoptists  and  John,  was  no  ordinary  person  ;  He  was  rather 
such  a  personality  as  had  never  appeared  in  history  before, 
yet  He  had  to  be  presented  in  a  history.  Let  us  attempt  to 
understand  their  difficulty  by  putting  it  as  a  problem  we  have 
ourselves  to  solve.  Suppose,  then,  we  had  to  describe  the 
character  and  career  of  a  person  possessed  of  the  miraculous 
powers  attributed  to  Jesus  ;  suppose  we  had  to  make  the 
history  at  once  express  the  power  and  become  the  character, 
and  yet  be  entirely  real  and  credible  to  men  with  the  common 
experience  and  critical  intelligence  of  their  race — how  should 
we  proceed  ?  what  sort  of  terms  should  we  employ  ?  what  kind 
of  incidents  select?  We  are  told  that  our  hero  is  to  be  a  person 
who  has  power  to  heal  the  sick,  unstop  the  ears  of  the  deaf, 
open  the  eyes  of  the  blind,  and  even  raise  the  dead  ;  or,  to  make 
the  case  even  more  real,  suppose  we  had  these  two  texts  given 
us  as  a  thesis  which  has  to  be  elucidated  and  illustrated  by 
means  of  an  appropriate  history  :  "  In  the  beginning  was  the 
Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was 


HOW   WE    SHOULD   WRITE    HIS    HISTORY?  351 

God  "  ; l  "  And  the  Word  became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us, 
and  we  beheld  His  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only  begotten  from 
the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth."  2     Our  initial  difficulties 
would  no  doubt  concern  the  relation  of  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural  in  Him  ;  the  outer  form  must  be  made  worthy 
of  the  divinity  that  dwells  within,  yet  how  can  it  be  worthily 
housed  in  flesh  ?  and  if  it  be  so  housed,  how  could  men  bear 
His  glory,  forget,  ignore,  or  misunderstand  the  sight,  or  live  in 
His  presence  their  commonplace,  sensuous,  mean,  indifferent 
lives?      We  should  thus  have    to  surround   Him   with   a   fit 
and   awed   society,   and  ought   not   this   society  to  be  like  a 
nimbus  or  translucent   cloud  penetrated   by   His  indwelling 
glory  ?     And  the  more  we  were  driven  in  this  direction  the 
more  violent  and  fantastic  would  the  history  become,  in  form 
more   akin   to   mythology   or   fairy   legend   than    to    history. 
For  we  should   not   dare  to  make    Him  as  regards   Himself 
subject  to  those  very  laws  of  nature  which  He  was  able,  on 
man's   behalf,   to   transcend.     That  would  be  too  flagrant   a 
contradiction  of  the  probabilities  in  the  situation.     PIcnce  He 
must  be  represented  as  remote  from  commonplace  humanity, 
and  especially  without  liability  to  disease,  weakness,  suffering, 
death.     And  what  sort  of  speech  should  we  attribute  to  Him  ? 
1  low  conceive  the   mind   which   the   speech  was   to   reveal  ? 
Ignorance,  of  course,  would  be  entirely  unbecoming  in  a  per- 
son so  endowed.     The  future  must  be  open  to   Him  ;    from 
Him  the  secrets  of  God  could  not  be  hid  ;  the  past  would  be 
as  clear  as  the  future,  and  every  reference  to  nature  and  his- 
tory, to  man  and  events,  would  express  a  knowledge  that  could 
not  err.      It  would  thus  be  impossible  for  Him  to  accommo- 
date Himself  to  the  conventions  of  His  time,  use  its  language, 
accept  its  theories,  and  move  amid  its  people  as  one  of  them- 
selves.    To  do  this  would  be  to  be  false  to  the  supernatural  in 
His  nature  ;  yet,  unless  lie  did  this,  how  could  He  appear  in 
any  historical  narrative  ?     We  should   be  tempted,  when  we 
1  John  i.  i.  *  John  i.  14. 


352  THE    EVANGELICAL    HISTORY   CONCEIVED 

thought  of  the  marvellous  person,  to  represent  all  He  did  as 
gigantesque,  and  all  He  said  under  the  form  of  the  mysterious 
and  the  oracular.  But  the  more  stupendous  the  representation 
grew,  the  more  abnormal,  contra-natural,  incredible,  would  the 
whole  conception  become,  and  we  should  be  forced  to  abandon 
the  task,  confessing  that  a  work  more  impossible  to  literary 
art  had  never  been  proposed  to  man. 

And  how  do  the  Gospels  deal  with  this  problem  ?  In  the 
most  surprising  way.  The  highest  speculation  is  embodied  in 
the  simplest  history.  He  who  is  conceived  as  "  the  Word 
become  flesh  "  is  represented  as  the  most  natural  character  in 
all  literature.  In  Him  there  is  nothing  obscure,  dark,  or 
mysterious  ;  He  seems  to  lie  all  open  to  the  day.  His  words 
are  simple  and  plain  ;  His  thought  is  always  clear  and  never 
complex.  He  is  the  last  person  who  could  be  described  as  a 
man  of  mystery.  He  does  not  study  or  practise  any  art  of 
concealment.  He  calls  His  disciples,  and  they  live  with  Him, 
and  He  lives  with  them  as  a  man  among  men.  He  does  not 
claim  to  know  the  secrets  of  nature  or  the  forgotten  things  of 
history,  or  the  day  and  hour  of  destiny,  which  the  Father 
alone  knoweth.1  He  does  not  stand  on  His  dignity,  or  require 
men  to  observe  the  order  of  their  coming  and  going.  A  Jew 
who  comes  by  night  is  not  refused  an  audience,  for  he  has 
come  in  deference  to  his  conscience,  even  though  he  comes  by 
night  in  deference  to  the  Jews  ;  but  Jesus  speaks  to  him  as  if 
all  men  stood  before  Him  in  that  one  man,  and  as  a  simple 
matter  of  fact  they  did  so  stand.  While  He  rests,  tired 
and  thirsty,  by  Jacob's  Well,  He  speaks  with  the  woman  of 
Samaria  and  asks  from  her  water  to  drink,  and  then  He 
addresses  to  her  words  the  world  was  waiting  to  hear.  We 
see  Him  loved  of  man  and  woman,  loving  as  well  as  loved, 
living  the  homely,  natural,  beautiful  life  of  our  kind.  His  is 
the  common,  every-day,  familiar  humanity,  which  suffers  and 
rejoices,  knows  sorrow  and  death.  But  this  humanity  is  all 
1  Mark  xiii.  32. 


WITHOUT   THE   MYTHICAL   IMAGINATION  353 

the  more  divine  that  it  is  so  natural  ;  it  is  man  become  the 
child  of  God,  embosomed  in  the  eternal,  a  nature  transfigured 
by  the  indwelling  supernatural.  The  simple  history  may  be 
said  to  clothe  the  Infinite,  and  it  makes  by  its  very  simplicity 
the  Infinite  all  the  more  manifest.  Truth  enters  at  the 
lowliest  door,  for  only  so  can  it  come  to  all  men.  There  is 
nothing  so  universal  as  nature,  and  the  truth  which  would 
reach  all  must  assume  a  form  intelligible  to  all ;  and  this 
means  that  man,  who  is  the  image  of  God,  is  the  fittest 
vehicle  for  the  revelation  of  the  God  whose  image  he  is. 

2.  We  may  say  then  that  were  the  Gospels  inventions, 
whether  mythical  or  conscious,  spontaneous  or  purposed, 
they  would  be  the  most  marvellous  creations  of  literary  art 
which  we  possess.  The  underlying  idea  is  majestic,  sublime, 
complex,  but  the  history  which  embodies  it  is  simple,  sober, 
sane,  while  the  person  in  and  by  whom  it  is  realized  is  the 
most  natural  and  human  character  in  all  literature.  Present 
the  idea  to  the  mythical  faculty,  and  it  would  weave  out  of  it 
a  gay  and  variegated  web,  as  it  were  a  tapestry  crowded  with 
the  adventures  of  the  faeriest  wonderland  ;  present  it  to  the 
disciplined  imagination,  and  it  would  feel  that  the  theme  was 
vaster  than  it  had  strength  of  pinion  to  carry.  But  the 
Evangelists  are  saved  by  their  very  simplicity  ;  they  tell  their 
tale,  they  report  the  words  of  their  Master,  and  then  they 
leave  their  history  and  their  logia  to  sink  into  the  reason  and 
wake  the  wonder  of  men.  And  what  is  the  result  ?  Stated 
in  the  soberest  way,  we  may  put  it  thus  :  The  Gospels  have 
done  for  Jesus — and  through  Him  for  man,  and  all  that  man 
signifies — what  the  imagination  under  the  long  discipline  of 
science  has  attempted  to  do  for  the  earth— viz.,  so  placed  our 
time  in  relation  to  eternity,  our  space  in  relation  to  immensity, 
as  through  the  greater  to  explain  the  less,  though  only  by 
the  less  can  we  know  and  understand  the  greater.  Here  we 
swim  in  the  bosom  of  two  infinities,  and  only  through  these 
infinities  can  the  process,  by  which  our  finite  has  come  to  be, 
P.C.R.  23 


354  THE   PERSON    OF   CHRIST 

be  conceived.  To  our  fathers  earth  had  no  mystery.  It  was 
but  a  narrow  plain,  bordered  and  washed  by  the  inviolate  sea. 
It  could  hardly  be  termed  venerable  ;  its  whole  history  lay 
within  the  brief  period  of  six  thousand  years.  On  a  given 
day  in  a  given  month  of  a  given  year,  God  had  spoken, 
and  through  His  speech  the  earth  had  in  six  successive  days 
become  what  we  know  it  to  be.  But  now  inquiry  has  crept 
slowly  back  through  the  centuries  behind  us,  pushing  time 
before  it  as  it  crept,  and  the  few  thousands  of  years  have 
lengthened  into  millions ;  and  as  man  has  in  imagination 
ascended  this  vast  avenue  of  ages,  he  has  seen  the  suc- 
cessive generations  of  being  slowly  descend  in  the  scale 
until  organic  being  has  disappeared  ;  and  he  has  stood  in 
thought  on  an  untenanted  earth,  a  slowly  cooling  mass, 
with  fire  within,  with  vapour  around,  like  a  monster  sleep- 
ing in  its  own  thick  breath ;  while  the  vapour,  slowly 
condensing,  forms  the  seas,  and  the  mass,  cooling,  hardens 
into  the  rocks.  And  even  here  the  imagination  has  not 
remained  ;  it  has  travelled  back,  and  has  looked  out  into 
the  void  which  is  the  womb  of  time,  and  seen  the  raw 
forces  of  things  mustering  for  their  creative  career,  the 
atoms  falling  through  space,  striking  against  each  other, 
aggregating,  combining,  here  solidifying  so  as  to  form  a 
sun,  there  throwing  off  smaller  masses  which  formed  them- 
selves into  planets,  though  rigorous  law  so  bound  the  severed 
masses  together  as  to  make  them  constitute  one  system. 
And  then  the  imagination,  unexhausted  by  its  backward  ex- 
ploration through  time,  has  crept  out  into  space,  pushing 
before  it  the  walls  that  limit  our  immensity,  and  by  the  help 
now  of  the  telescope,  and  now  of  the  photographic  plate,  it 
has  added  realm  upon  realm  of  being  to  our  known  and 
observed  universe,  till  we  feel  as  if  earth  were  but  a  mote 
floating  in  the  midst  of  a  measureless  expanse,  which  yet  is 
no  wilderness,  but  rather  a  fair  and  fruitful  land,  peopled  with 
innumerable  worlds.  But  infinitesimal  as  seems  the  earth  in 


AS    EPITOME    OF   THE   UNIVERSE          355 

this  infinitude,  it  yet  for  us  holds  the  secret  which  explains  it 
It  is  one  of  the  mighty  host  amid  which  it  swims  and  floats. 
It  shares  their  being,  it  partakes  in  their  life,  it  marches  in 
their  order,  it  belongs  to  their  system.  We,  though  but  a 
part,  are  yet  in  and  through  and  because  of  the  whole  ;  and 
so  in  us  the  problem  of  the  whole  is  concentrated.  Our 
existence,  little  as  it  seems,  is  big  with  the  meaning  of  the 
universe,  holds  the  only  solution  we  can  ever  find  of  the  over- 
mastering mystery  of  being. 

Now  just  as  our  earth  becomes  at  once  more  majestic  and 
intelligible  through  these  infinities  that  bound  its  finitude, 
and  as  it  yet  is  the  key  to  all  their  secrets,  so  Jesus  is  con- 
ceived by  the  Evangelists  as  a  mystery  that  must  be  read 
through  the  eternal  God,  and  yet  as  a  reason  that  makes 
all  His  mysteries  intelligible,  credible,  lucid,  and  articulate. 
The  secrets  which  were  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father  are  so 
manifested  in  Him  as  to  be  perceptible  by  our  grosser  sense. 
Hence,  within  the  limits  of  the  sensuous  lives  a  spiritual,  ex- 
pressive of  things  the  eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  the  ear  heard, 
nor  the  hands  handled.  And  the  humanity  which  so  reveals 
Deity  could  not  be  other  than  universal,  embodied  indeed 
in  a  person,  but  a  person  who  is  as  essentially  related  on 
the  one  side  of  His  being  to  man  in  all  his  phases  and  in 
all  his  ages,  as  on  the  other  side  to  God.  And  so  to  the 
Evangelists  He  is  at  once  the  Son  of  Adam  and  the  only 
Begotten  of  the  Father. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ETHICAL  TRANSCENDENCE   OF  JESUS 

THE  miraculous  history  is  the  most  local  and  ephemeral 
thing  in  literature ;  it  lives  within  a  given  geo- 
graphical and  ethnic  area,  and  never  outlasts  an  early  stage 
of  culture.  Mythologies  which  were  once  believed  because 
of  their  supernatural  machinery  are  now,  on  account  of 
this  same  machinery,  credible  no  more.  They  may  help 
the  enquirer  to  see  the  human  mind  petrified,  as  it  were, 
at  a  particular  moment  in  its  development,  but  they  can 
never  be  regarded  as  permanent  products  of  the  mature 
reason  or  be  taken  for  rational  theologies  or  authentic  his- 
tories. The  standard  of  credibility  is  not  indeed  uniform, 
nor  is  belief  in  the  marvellous  restricted  to  simple  minds  ; 
and  when  the  subtle  believe  in  the  supernatural,  they  do  it 
with  surprising  thoroughness.  In  this  region  the  Orient 
easily  excels  the  Occident,  for  narratives  which  offend  the 
critical  reason  of  the  European  scholar,  speak  agreeably  to 
the  speculative  genius  of  the  Hindu  pandit.  If,  then,  the 
Gospels  had  been  simply  miraculous  stories,  they  might  have 
lived  a  precarious  life  in  the  East,  but  in  the  West  they 
would  have  died  long  ago  and  been  forgotten.  What  has 
made  them  potent  and  credible,  even  in  the  face  of  belief  in 
a  natural  law  which  cannot  be  violated,  is  that  they  have 
acted  as  the  frame  to  the  picture  of  a  moral  loveliness  that 
can  never  grow  old.  Yet  the  idea  this  picture  expresses  may 
be  more  radically  opposed  to  naturalism,  whether  physical 
or  historical,  than  belief  in  all  the  miracles  recorded  in  all  the 

356 


IDEALS    IMAGINARY    AND    REAL          357 

mythologies.  For  physical  pre-eminence  is  by  its  very 
nature  individual  and  transitory,  but  spiritual  transcendence 
is  immortal,  with  qualities  that  penetrate  to  the  very  heart 
of  nature  and  cover  the  whole  circuit  of  history.  Now  the 
Evangelists  may  be  said  to  have  conceived  the  essence  of 
Christ's  person  to  lie  in  its  spiritual  transcendence  ;  and  in 
this  they  but  anticipated  the  mind  of  Christendom.  It  is, 
indeed,  remarkable  what  a  small  part  the  belief  in  the 
miracles  has  played  in  the  life  of  the  religion  ;  and  even  this 
part  has  been  due  not  to  themselves  but  to  their  moral  sig- 
nificance. It  is  only  when  we  turn  to  the  character  of  Jesus 
that  we  begin  to  escape  from  the  outer  court  of  the  temple. 

§  I.    The  EtJiical  Ideal  of  the  Gospels 

I.  Ethical  perfection  is  a  much  more  delicate  thing  to 
handle,  as  well  as  a  much  more  difficult  thing  to  conceive 
and  describe,  than  physical  transcendence.  For  literary  art 
has  never  yet  succeeded  in  embodying  it  in  an  actual  person. 
It  has  given  us  many  a  theoretical  ideal,  which  was  indeed  but 
a  category  of  definitions  or  a  synthesis  of  abstract  virtues  so 
adjusted  as  to  look  like  the  articulated  skeleton  of  some 
ancient  moral  man.  But  such  an  imaginary  impersonation 
has  always  suffered  from  a  twofold  defect :  (a)  it  has,  like 
the  perfect  man  of  the  Stoics,  so  exaggerated  sectional  qual- 
ities and  local  features  as  to  make  its  ideal  unsuitable  to 
other  times,  classes  and  places  than  those  for  which  it  was 
written  ;  and  (/3)  it  has  been  without  practical  efficiency,  for 
the  unrealized  vision  is  too  impalpable  to  move  men  either 
to  imitation  or  emulation.  But  the  embodied  idea  of  the 
Gospels  is,  while  personal,  so  generic  as  to  be  universally 
imitable  ;  and  it  has  proved  its  potency  by  accomplishing 
the  vastest,  if  the  most  silent,  of  revolutions.  Jesus  is  not  a 
creature  of  the  religious  imagination,  but  rather  its  creator,  or 
superlative  inspirer  ;  for  He  has  determined  the  form  it  has 


358        ETHICAL   SUBJECT   AND  PAINTER 

assumed  and  the  ends  it  has  pursued  in  the  personal  and 
collective  histories  of  Christendom.  It  is  as  He  appears  in 
the  Gospels  that  He  has  lived  in  the  faith  of  man,  shaped 
his  character  and  governed  his  destiny.  He  could  not 
indeed  have  so  lived  unless  His  person  had  borne  a  supreme 
transcendental  idea  ;  but  the  idea  without  the  real  personality 
would  have  been  a  mere  dead  abstraction.  It  is  this  which 
makes  the  Gospels  books  of  religion  rather  than  religious 
biographies.  In  a  particular  person  they  represent  universal 
man ;  He  is  so  typical  that  what  He  was  every  man  may  be, 
and  all  men  ought  to  become.  To  follow  Him  is  to  save  the 
soul  ;  to  assume  His  yoke  and  learn  of  Him  is  to  find  in  the 
highest  duty  the  most  perfect  rest.  To  have  His  mind  is  to 
be  perfect  even  as  the  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect.  He  is  an 
embodied  conscience,  defining  duty  and  executing  judgment. 
To  imitate  Him  is  to  be  obedient  to  God  ;  to  be  faithless  to 
Him  is  to  lose  eternal  life.  Foresight  of  their  function  is 
evident  in  every  line  the  Evangelists  draw,  and  history  has 
justified  their  belief  that  in  Jesus  they  had  discovered 
qualities  too  immortal  to  die,  and  too  transcendental  to  be 
overcome  by  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  change  of  place. 

2.  The  writer  who  would  embody  in  a  person  dwelling  in 
space  and  time  a  perpetual  and  universal  ethical  ideal,  has 
to  overcome  certain  initial  difficulties  that  may  well  seem 
insuperable. 

i.  The  subject  must  not  be  allowed  to  appear  as  a  con- 
scious sitter,  a  person  who  knows  that  he  is  being  watched 
in  order  that  he  may  be  sketched  as  an  example  for  all  later 
men.  Were  he  to  conceive  himself  as  living  his  life  in  the 
eye  of  the  world  and  for  its  edification,  his  mental  undertone 
would  be  that  of  the  actor  who  plays  his  part  upon  the  public 
stage,  with  this  difference  — that  the  actor  by  profession  may 
preserve  his  integrity,  but  the  actor  who  means  his  acting  to 
be  taken  for  reality  is  certain  to  lose  it.  Conscious  holiness 
is  foster  brother  to  conscious  sin  ;  the  goodness  that  knows 


MUST    BE   ALIKE    UNCONSCIOUS  359 

itself  to  be  good  is  but  the  inward  side  of  the  spirit  that 
outwardly  thanks  God  that  it  is  not  as  other  men.  And  this 
is  a  spirit  which  other  men  see  nothing  in  either  to  admire 
or  imitate  ;  but  from  Jesus  as  the  Evangelists  show  Him  to 
us  this  spirit  is  infinitely  remote.  His  character  appears 
throughout  as  natural,  His  conduct  spontaneous,  His  motives 
simple,  His  thought  and  speech  transparently  sincere.  He 
is  without  the  literary  consciousness  ;  He  did  not  write  or 
command  anything  to  be  written  concerning  Himself;  neither 
did  He  seem  to  think  that  the  craft  of  letters  had  any 
concern  in  Him  or  He  any  concern  with  it.  His  field  of 
action  was  in  the  open  air,  not  in  the  study  ;  He  was  con- 
tent to  impress  Himself  on  the  minds  of  men,  to  live 
divinely  careless  in  the  present,  without  any  thought  of 
how  He  should  seem  to  the  future,  yet  so  conscious  of  the 
all-seeing  and  all-enfolding  God  as  to  make  of  the  moment 
He  lived  in  an  eternal  Now.  Of  all  persons  who  have  made 
history  no  one  has  had  so  brief  a  public  life  as  He,  for  it 
extended  but  little  beyond  two  years  ;  and  it  was  lived  face 
to  face  with  nature  and  in  the  society  of  simple  men,  who 
had  no  eye  for  aesthetic  features  or  majestic  bearing  or  any  of 
the  things  the  artist  in  colours  or  in  style  so  dearly  loves. 
He  and  they  were  alike  in  knowing  no  art  but  nature,  and  so 
their  transcendent  results  were  attained  by  nature  and  not 
by  art. 

ii.  The  writers  must  be  as  unconscious  of  their  art  as  their 
subject  is  of  its  being  exercised  upon  him.  And  the  Evan- 
gelists did  not  know  how  great  a  thing  they  were  doing  : 
if  they  had  known,  they  could  not  have  done  it,  for  that 
would  have  meant  that  they  conceived  themselves  as  work- 
ing, with  the  whole  world  looking  on,  at  a  model  for  all  men 
to  copy.  If  an  author  attempted  to  compose  a  history  with 
a  vision  of  all  the  ages  standing  at  his  elbow  and  reading 
his  words,  he  would  lose  the  serene  eye  which  reflects  the 
truth  and  would  see  double.  Now  what  the  Evangelists 


360  AN   EVERLASTING   CREATION 

give  us  is  a  real  portrait  which  is  yet  an  undesigned  ideal. 
They  were  not,  any  more  than  their  great  original,  literary 
men  ;  their  atmosphere  was  not  the  Athens  of  Thucydides 
or  Plato,  the  Rome  of  Cicero  or  Horace.  The  art  of  bio- 
graphy was  unknown  to  their  race  and  class,  and  the  only 
literature  they  knew — if  indeed  they  could  be  said  to  know 
it — was  in  a  language  which  men  of  the  classic  tongues  held 
to  be  barbarous.  There  is  indeed  one  Evangelist  who  may 
be  described  a?  a  Greek,  but  he  is  confessedly  not  an  eye- 
witness, and  only  "  sets  in  order "  material  which  already 
existed.  They  did  not  dream  of  deathless  fame,  or  of  pro- 
ducing a  work  which  posterity  would  not  let  die.  They 
wrote  to  tell  what  they  most  surely  believed  ;  but  in  telling 
their  tale  they  created  the  only  true  /crrj^a  e$  aei 

iii.  There  is  unconscious  but  real  art  in  the  limits  they 
observe,  in  the  shadows  they  allow  to  fall  upon  the  sunlight 
of  their  picture.  The  temptation  of  the  artist  would  have 
been  to  make  his  hero  calm  and  radiant.  He  would  have 
conceived  the  sinless  as  a  sorrowless  state,  untouched  by 
frailty  or  infirmity,  undarkened  by  suffering  or  sin.  But  the 
Evangelists  are  greatly  daring  :  the  Jesus  they  describe  is  too 
completely  a  man  to  be  in  any  respect  alien  from  humanity. 
He  is  tempted  without  being  overcome  of  sin  ;  He  can  be 
angry  and  fierce  as  well  as  kind  and  gentle ;  He  can  speak 
words  that  bite  as  well  as  truths  that  console.  He  feels  the 
bitterness  of  death,  the  horror  of  its  great  darkness,  the 
desolation  of  being  forsaken  of  God.  It  is  by  a  supreme 
struggle  that  He  achieves  resignation,  and  in  the  conflict  with 
His  destiny  He  craves  human  sympathy,  though  He  does  not 
receive  it.  These  are  things  the  conscious  literary  biographer 
would  have  toned  down  or  hidden,  but  the  Evangelists  leave 
them  standing,  flagrant,  in  the  reader's  eye.  Without  touching 
here  the  profound  philosophy  which  justifies  these  traits,  we 
may  note  how  near  they  bring  Jesus  to  man,  how  much  they 
increase  His  personal  charm  and  the  potency  of  His  example. 


THE    ACCESSIBILITY   OF   JESUS  361 

We  can  think  of  Him  as  of  our  kind — one  of  ourselves.  There 
are  multitudes  'of  the  saintly  less  accessible  than  He,  severe 
ascetics,  martyrs  to  conscientiousness,  rigorous  devotees  of 
virtue  and  self-denial,  so  remote  from  all  weakness  and  so 
severe  to  self-indulgence  that  we  dare  not  confess  our  sins  in 
their  presence,  or  hint  that  our  humanity  is  frail.  But  we 
can  do  this  before  Him,  yet  in  doing  it  we  come  to  feel  more 
ashamed  of  ourselves  and  of  our  sins  than  we  possibly  could 
in  the  face  of  a  sanctity  too  complete  to  sympathize  with 
our  susceptibility  to  sin.  This  may  seem  a  paradox,  but  it 
is  a  fact ;  and  it  expresses  an  adaptation  of  Christ's  person  to 
human  experience  which  can  hardly  be  explained  by  accident 
or  the  operation  of  any  fortuitous  cause. 

§  II.      The  Sinlessness  of  Jesus 

I.  It  does  not  surprise  us  as  it  ought  to  find  in  books 
which  have  been  said  to  owe  their  existence  to  the  untutored 
and  unchastened  oriental  imagination,  the  history  of  a  high 
religious  personality  written  without  adulation  and  eulogy, 
and  with  a  severe  and  even  austere  moderation.  It  is  sig- 
nificant that  they  never  speak  of  Christ  in  terms  of  praise  so 
ecstatic  as  Plato  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Alcibiades  concern- 
ing Socrates,1  or  as  unqualified  as  those  Xenophon  employs.2 
On  the  contrary,  they  allow  Him  simply  to  unfold  Himself  in 
the  light.  They  seem  to  have  cared  little  for  external  testi- 
mony to  His  character,  judging,  perhaps,  that  an  eye-witness 
sees  but  a  single  moment  in  a  life  and  casts  upon  it  but  a 
hasty  and  prejudiced  glance.  Still,  there  are  a  few  significant 
witnesses.  Pilate,  who  has  the  magistrate's  eye  for  crime, 
describes  Him  as  a  "just  person,"  in  whom  no  fault  or 
cause  of  death  has  been  found.3  His  wife  expresses  a  like 
judgment.4  The  penitent  thief  confesses  that,  while  he 

1  Symposium,  p.  215  flf.  *  Memorabilia,  I.  i.  1 1. 

3   Matt,  xxvii.  24  ;   Luke  xxiii.  22  ;  John  xix.  6.          *  Matt,  xxvii.  19. 


362  THE    EXTERNAL   TESTIMONY 

himself  dies  justly,  Jesus  "has  done  nothing  amiss."1  The 
centurion  who  watched  by  the  cross,  and  who  saw  the 
Crucified,  described  Him  as  "the  Son  of  God."2  His  enemies 
bear  involuntary  testimony  to  His  piety  when  they  utter 
their  gibe,  "  He  trusted  in  God."  3  Judas  convicts  himself  of 
sin  when  he  says,  "  I  have  betrayed  innocent  blood."  4  Even 
before  His  public  ministry  the  Baptist,  the  most  jealous  and 
outspoken  of  all  contemporary  critics  of  character,  recog- 
nized His  moral  pre-eminence  ;  5  and  Peter  so  sees  himself  in 
the  light  of  the  Master's  purity  as  to  cry,  "  Depart  from  me, 
for  I  am  a  sinful  man,  O  Lord." 6  "I  am  not  worthy  to 
touch  Thee,  and  Thou  art  too  holy  to  touch  me."  And  the 
reserve  thus  studiously  cultivated  is  but  a  reflection  of  Christ's 
own.  He  does  not  speak  like  one  who  feels  as  if  He  stood  or 
fell  by  man's  judgment.  His  challenge  to  the  Jews,  "  Which 
of  you  convicteth  Me  of  sin  ? " 7  means,  indeed,  that  He 
knows,  and  they  too  know,  that  the  only  answer  possible 
involves  the  counter  challenge.  "  Why  then  do  ye  not  be- 
lieve Me,  who  am  true  and  speak  the  truth  ?  "  He  describes 
Himself  as  "  a  green  tree  "8  over  against  the  "  dry  tree,"  which 
was  fit  for  the  burning.  He  is  more  explicit  to  His  disciples, 
and  says,  "  The  ruler  of  the  world  cometh  and  hath  nothing 
in  Me,"  9  i.e.  the  master  of  the  sinful  finds  Me  sinless.  And 
so  He  is  not  of  the  world,10  but,  like  His  kingdom,  He  is  from 
above.11  These  high  and  transcendent  claims  are  not  com- 
patible with  the  consciousness  of  sin,  and  His  reserve  makes 
such  utterances  the  more  impressive  :  He  who  so  studiously 
conceals  His  soul  is  to  be  trusted  all  the  more  when  His  soul 
is  surprised  into  speech.  Nor  are  these  sayings  weakened  by 

I  Luke  xxiii.  41.  s  Mark  xv.  39  ;  Matt,  xxvii.  54. 
'  Matt.  43  ;   cf.  xxii.  16.                      4  Ibid,  xxvii.  4, 

8  Matt.  iii.  14  ;  Luke  iii.  16.  8  Luke  v.  8. 

T  John  viii.  46.  8  Luke  xxiii.  31. 

9  John  xix.  30.  w  John  xvii.  14,  16. 

II  Ibid,  xviii.  36,  viii.  23. 


AND  THE    INWARD   CONSCIOUSNESS      363 

His  reply  to  the  Jewish  ruler  :  "  Why  callest  thou  Me  good  ? 
There  is  none  good  except  one,  God." 1  He  would  not 
accept  a  title  out  of  mere  courtesy  or  politeness,  nor  would 
He  allow  to  be  applied  to  one  who  was  only  a  "  Teacher  "  an 
epithet  which  properly  belongs  to  God  alone.  And  this  was 
the  more  imperative  as  the  ruler  uses  of  the  act  he  would  do 
the  very  term  he  uses  of  the  Master.  He  needed,  therefore, 
to  be  reminded  that  there  was  but  one  absolutely  good  Being; 
His  goodness  is  original,  and  all  other  is  derivative,  even  the 
Son  being  but  the  express  image  of  the  Father.  "  There  is 
n9ne  good  but  one,  God,"  does  not  signify  "  I  am  bad,"  but 
rather,  "think  of  My  goodness  through  Him,  and  judge  the 
quality  of  the  acts  you  would  do  through  what  is  pleasing  in 
His  sight." 

2.  But  more  impressive  than  the  explicit  is  the  implicit 
evidence  as  to  the  quality  of  the  moral  ideal  which  Jesus 
embodied. 

i.  He  betrays  no  consciousness  of  sin,  neither  confesses 
it  nor  asks  pardon  for  it,  nor  speaks  as  if  He  were  in 
thought  or  being  alien  from  God,  or  had  been  guilty  of  any 
act  which  could  have  made  God  alien  from  Him.  His  good- 
ness does  not  begin  in  any  change  of  heart ;  for  though  He 
commands  man  everywhere  to  repent,  He  nowhere  implies 
that  He  has  Himself  experienced,  or  has  needed,  conversion. 
He  speaks  throughout  as  one  who  does  not  belong  to  the 
category  of  sinners,  a  thing  the  holiest  men  have  been  the 
least  able  to  do.  He  is  aware,  indeed,  that  sin  is  common  to 
the  race,  that  nothing  more  becomes  man  before  God  than 
the  language  of  contrition  and  confession,  and  that  he  who 
imagines  himself  to  be  so  good  as  to  be  apart  from  the  guilty 
multitude  is  guiltier  than  they.  He  judged  sin  as  no  man 
had  ever  judged  it  before,  and  spared  it  not,  whether  as  incor- 
porated in  persons  of  reputed  godliness,  or  as  expressed  in 
acts  ;  whether  it  lurked  in  the  secret  sources  of  action,  lusted 
1  Mark  x.  17;  Luke  xviii.  18.  Cf.  Matt.  xix.  16-17. 


364  THE   SINLESS   FORGIVES    SINS 

in  the  eye,  hid  in  the  thoughts,  or  sat  behind  the  tongue  that 
feared  to  break  into  speech.  But  to  have  been  conscious 
of  evil  while  so  judging  it  would  have  been,  measured  by  the 
standard  He  applied  to  man,  to  be  guilty  of  intolerable  un- 
charitableness  and  pride. 

ii.  What  is  even  more  characteristic,  and  would  have  been 
in  any  ordinary  case  a  note  of  pride  still  more  intolerable, 
is  that  He  forgives  while  He  has  no  conscious  need  of 
forgiveness.  He  said  to  the  sick  of  the.  palsy,  "  Son,  thy 
sins  are  forgiven  thee  ;  "  and  the  scribes,  who  knew  the  law, 
charged  Him  with  blasphemy,  saying  truly,  "  Who  can  for- 
give sins  but  God  only?"1  To  forgive  sins  against  oneself, 
if  such  sins  there  be,  is  an  affectation  of  superiority  which 
it  needs  a  generous  man  to  overlook  ;  but  to  forgive  the 
sins  which  concern  God,  and  which  only  God  can  know,  is 
an  act  which  implies  a  purity  of  nature  equal  to  God's  own, 
an  unconsciousness  of  sin  and  a  consciousness  of  holiness 
which  we  can  describe  as  nothing  less  than  divine.  And 
alongside  the  act  stands  a  most  unexpected  consequence  : 
the  men  whose  sins  He  forgives  hate  sin  as  the  unforgiven 
never  do.  Forgiveness  in  His  hands  does  not  become  a 
concession  to  human  frailty,  or  an  encouragement  to  evil, 
but  an  injunction  against  sinning  ;  the  man  who  receives  it 
feels  he  must  sin  no  more.  And  there  is  a  parallel  yet  oppo- 
site fact,  what  the  meaner  critic  thinks  a  suspicious  inconsis- 
tency between  His  doctrine  and  His  practice.  He  judged  sin 
seriously  ;  He  was  most  severe  to  the  offending  eye  or  heart, 
foot  or  hand  ;  it  was  to  be  plucked  out  and  cut  off  rather 
than  that  the  man  should  enter  whole  into  hell.  His  con- 
science was  sensitive  to  the  shadow  cast  by  sin,  yet  He  asso- 
ciated with  the  outcasts  of  Israel.  The  very  men  who  wanted 
to  convict  Him  of  blasphemy  because  He  forgave  sin,  com- 
plained that  He  was  "the  friend  of  publicans  and  sinners."  2 
They  could  not  understand  why  He  should  seek  the  society 
1  Mark  ii.  5-7.  2  Mark  ii.  13-17  ;  cf.  Luke  xv.  2. 


YET   IS    FRIEND   OF   SINNERS  365 

of  the  guilty  while  He  was  so  severe  to  their  guilt  But  the 
sinners  never  rnistook  the  root  and  reason  of  His  friendship 
for  they  knew,  though  the  scribes  did  not,  why  He  not  only 
ventured  into  their  company,  but  felt  bound  to  seek  it,  even 
while  hating  the  things  they  loved.  He  sought  it  because 
He  was  their  friend  ;  and  because  of  His  very  sinlessness  He 
could  move  amid  evildoers  like  one  who  bore  a  will 
charmed  against  their  spell,  too  perfect  in  its  love  of  purity 
to  be  seduced  towards  evil.  The  Pharisee  was  but  studying 
his  own  safety  when  he  held  aloof  from  the  publican  ;  the 
consciousness  of  sin  warned  him  against  all  dalliance  with 
sinners.  Our  social  conventions  are  the  safeguards  of  frail 
virtue  against  potent  vice,  and  the  policy  of  isolation  is  the 
method  by  which  a  nature  no  longer  pure  fortifies  itself 
against  natures  still  remoter  from  purity.  But  Jesus  knew 
neither  fear  nor  shame,  and  needed  not  the  protection  of 
distinguishing  custom  or  speech,  for  while  their  state  moved 
His  soul  to  pity,  His  very  presence  awoke  within  them  the 
desire  after  higher  things. 

3.  But  over  against  His  relation  to  sin  and  man  stands  His 
relation  to  God.  There  is  no  saint  in  the  whole  calendar  less 
distinguished  by  what  we  may  term  the  apparatus  of  religion. 
It  was  His  deficiency  in  this  respect  that  helped  to  make 
Him  despised  and  rejected  of  men.  It  would  be  easy  to 
find  persons  in  every  age  and  church  since  He  lived  more 
zealous  than  He  was  in  special  religious  exercises  or  for 
single  virtues.  Stones  have  been  worn  smooth  by  the  knees 
of  His  penitents  ;  martyrs  have  died  at  the  stake  for  His 
name,  rejoicing  amid  the  flames  and  insensible  to  pain  ;  the 
poor  have  been  served  more  assiduously  than  He  ever 
served  them,  and  the  diseased  have  been  ministered  to  with 
a  care  and  a  tenderness  He  never  surpassed,  if  indeed  He 
equalled.  The  hermit  or  the  monk  who  forsook  the  world 
that  he  might  give  himself  wholly  to  the  worship  of  God, 
has  in  bodily  mortification  gone  beyond  anything  that  is 


366      HE    EMBODIED   DIVINE   PERFECTION 

recorded  of  Jesus  ;  while  the  nun  who  has  hidden  herself 
in  the  cloister  that  she  may  attain  whiteness  of  soul,  has  sur- 
rendered herself  to  a  severer  discipline  than  He  ever  practised. 
Yet  these  are  but  the  strenuous  labours  of  persons  who  are 
miserable  through  their  great  desire  to  win  by  personal  effort 
what  He  possessed  by  nature.  He  lived  embosomed  in 
Deity,  filled,  penetrated,  transfigured  by  God,  yet  not  by  a 
God  who  was  simply  the  fulfilment  of  desire  or  the  infinite 
abyss  which  swallowed  up  the  very  personalities  it  had  pro- 
duced ;  but  rather  a  God  of  transcendent  ethical  severity, 
whose  truth  could  suffer  no  falsehood,  who  was  the  light 
which  could  bear  no  darkness,  the  good  which  could  tolerate 
no  evil,  the  life  which  overcame  death,  the  love  that  cast  out 
hate.  The  extraordinary  thing  is  the  co-existence  in  the 
same  person  of  this  total  unconsciousness  of  sin  with  the 
complete  conscious  possession  of  an  absolutely  holy  God. 
For  Jesus  so  lived  that  He  seemed  to  men  the  ethical  per- 
fection of  God  embodied  in  an  ideally  perfect  manhood. 
And  indeed  He  is  most  really  man  when  He  and  the  Father 
so  interpenetrate  that  they  become  one,  each  so  mingled  in 
the  other  that  He  and  we  alike  lose  all  consciousness  of  dis- 
tinction, and  they  who  hear  or  who  see  the  Son  hear  and  see 
the  Father.  Yet  this  is  not  absorption  in  the  manner  of  the 
oriental  mystic ;  the  personal  is  not  lost  in  the  universal  soul. 
The  mysticism  which  the  East  has  loved  is  a  dream  of  man's 
disappearance  into  a  deity  infinitely  absorbent,  where  he 
attains  beatitude  by  escaping  from  the  form  Deity  had  given 
into  the  substance  Deity  is.  And  the  result  is  a  piety  of 
languor  and  quiescence,  of  ethical  lassitude  and  social  isola- 
tion, which  fears  the  burden  of  self  and  desires  above  every- 
thing the  chance  of  laying  it  down.  But  in  Jesus  the 
perfection  which  God  loves  is  one  with  the  realization  of 
personal  manhood  ;  it  is  the  harmony  of  idea  and  being,  of 
the  governed  character  with  the  governing  thought.  Obedi- 
ence was  to  Him  a  movement  that  did  not  tire,  because  it 


ORIGINALITY   OF   THE    IDEAL  367 

knew  no  friction  ;  beatitude  was  the  vision  of  God,  expressed 
not  in  voluptu6us  quiet  but  in  beneficent  activity.  It  was 
out  of  the  conflict  of  the  ideal  He  embodied  with  the  actual 
He  confronted,  that  the  sorrows  came  which  constituted  His 
passion  and  delivered  Him  unto  death. 

§  III.    Qualities  of  this  Ideal  of  Sinlessness 

I.  It  must  be  confessed  that  this  moral  ideal,  drawn  by 
oriental  peasants  innocent  of  literary  art — for  Luke  but 
repeats  and  arranges  what  he  had  received — is  a  work  of 
stupendous  originality.  It  has  no  prototype  in  religion  or 
in  literature.  The  mythical  theory  owed,  as  we  have  said,  its 
vogue  and  its  verisimilitude  to  the  idea  that  the  Evangelists 
were  deeply  versed  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  clothed  their 
hero  in  garments  which  they  had  borrowed  from  that  vast 
and  ancient  storehouse.  But  at  the  very  point  where  this 
theory,  if  it  were  true,  ought  to  have  found  final  verification, 
it  finds  explicit  contradiction  and  disproof.  For  the  most 
original  thing  in  the  New  Testament  is  not  the  acts  or  out- 
ward history  of  Jesus,  but  His  spirit  or  inner  character.  It 
is  no  doubt  true  that  His  historical  and  religious  antecedents 
are  in  the  Old  Testament  ;  there,  too,  are  the  ideas  He 
transfigures,  the  hopes  lie  fulfils,  the  institutions  He  super- 
sedes ;  but  what  is  not  there  is  His  moral  image,  the 
personality  He  becomes.  For  in  the  Old  Testament  there 
is  no  sinless  man  with  a  mission  to  men  rather  than  to  the 
chosen  race.  Moses  indeed  is  meek  and  "  faithful  in  all  his 
house,"  but  he  so  sins  that  he  is  not  allowed  to  set  foot 
within  the  promised  land.  David,  the  hero-king,  is  described 
as  a  man  after  God's  o\vn  heart,  but  he  is  guilty  of  deeds 
abhorred  alike  of  God  and  man.  Elijah,  the  most  impressive 
figure  among  the  prophets,  breaks  down  in  the  hour  of  trial, 
and  confesses  himself  to  be  a  man  no  better  than  his  fathers. 
Isaiah,  the  seer  of  sublimest  vision,  feels  himself  to  be  to<> 


368 

unclean  of  lip  to  be  a  messenger  of  God.  In  the  prophetic 
vision  of  the  suffering  servant  of  God,  who  did  no  violence, 
neither  had  any  deceit  in  his  mouth,1  there  are  lines  that 
foreshadow  the  evangelical  ideal  ;  but  the  vision  remained  a 
vision,  symbolical,  typical,  an  image  of  collective  Israel,  until 
He  came  who  so  lived  as  to  turn  it  into  a  reality.  And 
thus  it  but  helps  to  define  and  sharpen  an  antithesis  which 
reaches  its  logical  climax  in  the  contrasted  creations  which 
sum  up  the  character  of  the  two  dispensations.  The  Old 
Testament  ends  not  in  an  ideal  manhood,  but  in  a  cere- 
monial institution,  in  a  method  for  making  man,  whom  it 
cannot  make  pure  within,  liturgically  clean.  The  literature 
burns  here  and  there  with  the  noblest  ethical  passion,  but 
the  religion  refuses  to  realize  its  ethical  dream,  and  plants 
the  official  priest  in  the  place  designed  for  the  saint.  The 
New  Testament,  on  the  contrary,  begins  not  in  a  sacerdotal 
order,  but  in  a  Moral  Person  ;  its  ideal  is  a  manhood,  not 
an  institution  ;  a  creative  character,  not  a  purificatory  method. 
And  in  this  its  greatness  and  its  originality  alike  lie.  All 
religions  had,  like  Judaism,  found  it  easier  to  create  the 
sacred  institution  than  the  holy  man,  though  none  did  it 
with  higher  energy  and  greater  skill.  But  Christ  opened  a 
more  excellent  way — created  a  religion  by  means  of  a  moral 
personality,  and  so  bound  the  two  together  that  they  could 
never  more  live  apart. 

2.  Quite  as  notable  as  the  originality  is  the  catholicity  of 
this  moral  ideal.  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  the  least  local, 
sectional,  or  occasional  type  of  moral  manhood  in  all  litera- 
ture. In  their  ideals  race  differs  from  race  and  age  from 
age.  The  typical  manhood  of  Greece,  while  under  the  spell 
of  Homer,  is  the  swift-footed  Achilles  or  the  crafty  and  far- 
travelled  Odysseus  ;  but  when  under  the  spell  of  Plato,  it  is 
the  sage  who  loved  truth,  praised  virtue,  and  studied  how 
to  know  and  realize  the  good  in  the  state.  The  saints  of 

1   Isa.  liii.  9. 


INDEPENDENT   OF   RACE    AND    PLACE     369 

the  East  would  not  be  canonized  in  the  West,  while  the 
qualities  which  the  cultured  West  most  admires  the  civilized 
East  holds  in  disdainful  contempt.  Few  things,  indeed, 
are  more  permanent  or  more  prohibitive  of  moral  sympathy 
and  appreciation  than  racial  characteristics.  A  good  man  in 
a  black  skin  may  be  pitied  and  helped,  or  patronized  and 
misunderstood,  by  white  men,  but  he  would  certainly  not  be 
hailed  as  a  saviour  to  be  believed  or  as  a  master  to  be 
revered  and  followed.  We  may  say,  "  beauty  is  only  skin 
deep,"  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  there  are  few  deeper  things 
than  skin  ;  it  represents  not  so  much  a  physiological  or  racial 
difference  as  an  intellectual,  a  moral,  and  a  social  cleavage 
between  man  and  man.  The  fields  of  religion  and  history 
teem  with  illustrations.  Confucius  is  a  sage  China  worships, 
but  the  Hindus  would  despise  his  ostentatious  ignorance  of 
the  only  Being  they  think  worth  knowing  and  his  indiffer- 
ence to  the  only  life  they  consider  worth  living.  The 
ascetic  community  which  is  Buddha's  social  ideal  for  his 
saints,  a  Greek  would  have  conceived  as  the  final  apostasy 
from  good  of  a  person  destined  by  nature  to  live  as  a  free 
citizen  in  a  free  state.  The  status  Mohammed  assigns  to 
woman  is  an  offence  to  the  domestic  ideal  of  the  Teuton  ; 
and  the  way  he  indulged  his  sexual  appetite  makes  him  more 
deeply  distasteful  than  even  the  "  necessary  fiction "  which 
he  compounded  with  "  the  eternal  truth,"  "  that  there  is  only 
one  God."  But  the  character  of  Jesus  transcends  all  racial 
limitations  and  divisions.  He  is  the  only  oriental  that 
the  Occident  has  admired  with  an  admiration  that  has  be- 
come worship.  His  is  the  only  name  the  West  has  carried 
into  the  East  which  the  East  has  received  and  praised  and 
loved  with  sincerity  and  without  qualification.  And  this 
power  it  has  exercised  ever  since  it  made  its  appeal  to  human 
thought  :  it  overcame  the  insolent  disdain  of  the  Greek  for 
all  things  barbarian  ;  the  proud  contempt  of  the  Roman 
for  a  crucified  malefactor  sprung  from  a  hated  and  conquered 
P.C.U.  24 


370  THE   UNIVERSAL   MANHOOD 

people  ;  the  vain  conceit  of  a  commercial  race,  which  be- 
fore the  moral  majesty  of  a  moneyless  peasant  has  almost 
wished  to  forget  its  passion  for  gold.  And  this  catholicity 
endures  because  it  is  based  upon  nature.  What  seemed  to 
His  own  day  disastrous  to  His  claims — the  want  of  rank, 
of  name  and  fame  and  honour — has  saved  the  ideal  from 
death,  emphasizing  the  fact  that  His  transcendence  was  due 
to  nothing  adventitious,  but  to  Himself  alone.  If  He  had 
appeared  as  Caesar,  the  majesty  of  the  man  would  have 
been  sacrificed  to  the  ostentation  of  the  Emperor;  if  as 
the  Roman  Augustas,  He  could  not  have  seemed  so  sub- 
lime and  kingly  as  He  does  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  But 
though  all  men  may  see  this  now,  few  saw  it  then.  Their 
ignorance  and  simplicity  saved  the  Evangelists  from  the 
temptation  to  make  Him  appear  more  royal  than  He  was. 
If  they  had  known  imperial  Rome,  they  could  hardly  have 
refrained  from  borrowing  some  of  its  purple  and  fine  linen 
for  His  cradle  or  His  grave.  If  they  had  known  how  the 
Gentiles  would  regard  His  birth  and  state,  they  might  have 
tried  to  hide  them  under  the  shadow  of  the  pomp  He  had 
despised.  But  knowing  Him  and  knowing  nothing  else, 
they  told  what  they  heard  and  described  what  they  saw, 
and  so  created  the  most  immortal  work  of  art  in  all  litera- 
ture,— a  character  so  complete  and  catholic  in  its  humanity 
that  to  it  alone  belongs  the  distinction  of  having  compelled 
the  homage  of  universal  man. 

3.  But  there  is  a  final  quality  in  the  character  of  Jesus 
which  we  can,  perhaps,  better  appreciate  than  even  the 
Evangelists  :  its  potency.  It  had,  indeed,  in  a  rare  degree 
the  attributes  of  gentleness  and  inflexibility.  He  described 
Himself  as  "meek  and  lowly  in  heart,"1  and  men  love  to 
speak  of  Him  even  yet  as  "  the  humble  Nazarene."  But  if 
"meekness"  be  understood  to  mean  compliancy,  or  "lowli- 
ness "  the  want  of  self-respect  and  personal  will,  or  "  humility  " 

1  Matt.  xi.  29. 


THE    IDEA   OF    CONVERSION  371 

the  surrender  of  conscience  and  reason  before  the  conven- 
tions and  imperious  commonplaceness  of  society,  or  indeed 
any  qualities  resembling  these,  no  one  ever  lived  to  whom 
such  terms  could  be  less  fitly  applied.  He  is,  where  duty  or 
truth  is  concerned,  the  very  impersonation  of  the  unconquer- 
able will  ;  where  dignity  or  right  is  at  issue,  it  is  vain  to 
speak  of  silence  or  submission  ;  where  pride  would  overbear 
or  justice  turn  into  expediency,  He  stands  up  with  a  front 
that  may  be  broken,  but  cannot  bend  or  retire.  The  cross 
signified  that  man  could  kill  but  not  subdue  Him  ;  desertion 
and  denial  came  and  awoke  His  pity,  but  they  could  not  turn 
Him  from  His  goal.  The  potency  of  His  character  is, 
however,  best  seen  in  its  historical  influence,  in  its  being  an 
immortal  and  inexhaustible  recreative  energy  Under  this 
aspect  its  force  may  be  represented  by  two  facts. 

(a)  By  acting  as  the  Friend  of  the  publican,  who  "  came  to 
call  not  the  righteous,  but  sinners  to  repentance,"  He  intro- 
duced the  great  idea  of  conversion,  set  it  by  His  own  conduct 
as  a  dut\r  before  His  people,  and  showed  how  it  was  to  be 
accomplished.  His  new  way  of  dealing  with  transgressors 
stood  over  against  the  old  way,  which  was  the  way  of  pride 
and  punishment,  of  insult  and  indignity,  of  a  society  which 
did  not  know  any  better  means  of  protecting  its  order  than 
the  destruction  of  the  persons  who  threatened  to  disturb  it. 
The  method  of  Jesus  was  remedial,  changing  the  sinner  and 
forgiving  his  sin.  He  used  friendship  and  affection  instead  of 
isolation  and  distrust  ;  His  love  played  round  the  man  whom 
hate  had  scorched,  waked  the  goodness  lying  dormant  in  the 
heart  of  guilt,  called  faithfulness  into  being  in  the  soul  of  the 
faithless,  out  of  the  man  who  had  been  cast  as  rubbish  to 
the  void  making  a  pillar  for  the  temple  of  God.  Man  has 
been  slow  to  understand  what  this  means  but  he  is  at  last 
coining  to  appreciate  the  new  attitude  it  created  in  the  good 
towards  the  evil,  the  hope  it  introduced  into  the  lot  of  the 
oppressed,  the  sense  of  duty  it  begot  in  those  who  have  in- 


372     SIN   FEARED   AND   SANCTITY   LOVED 

herited  virtue  to  those  whose  main  inheritance  is  vice,  and 
the  way  it  has  enriched  humanity  by  bringing  into  its  service 
multitudes  who  would  otherwise  have  sullied  its  fame  and 
marched  in  the  army  which  fights  against  its  peace.  In- 
finite, untouched  possibilities  lie  in  this  idea  of  conversion. 
Though  to  it  the  Church  of  Christ  owes  the  most  radiant  of 
the  luminaries  that  have  made  its  militant  night  clearer  than 
the  day,  yet  we  have  a  long  way  to  travel  before  we  can 
get  close  enough  to  His  spirit  to  see  it  as  it  is,  and  to  be  the 
willing  captives  of  its  power.  But  even  so,  this  new  mind 
and  attitude  is  only  an  incidental  consequence  from  the 
knowledge  of  His  character,  hardly  visible  amid  the  host 
of  His  benefactions  to  mankind. 

(/3)  By  His  transcendent  moral  purity  He  has  created  two 
things  which  seem  opposites,  but  are  correlatives  and  counter- 
parts, the  deepest  consciousness  of  sin  and  the  lesire  for  the 
highest  sanctity.  Man  knew  sin  before  Him  ;  Hebrew  litera- 
ture is  full  of  it.  Men,  as  they  thought  of  God's  majesty,  and 
knew  that  they  were  searched  by  eyes  which  were  too  pure 
to  behold  iniquity,  abhorred  themselves  in  dust  and  ashes. 
Classical  literature  knew  it,  for  it  is  one  of  the  themes  on 
which  Seneca  speaks  almost  like  a  Christian  apostle.  Yet 
it  is  true  that  there  was  before  Christ  no  such  consciousness 
of  sin  as  He,  by  His  very  sinlessness,  created.  There  were 
ritual  offences  which  ritual  could  remove  ;  there  were  lapses 
from  virtue  which  repentance  could  wipe  out ;  there  were 
even  transgressions  against  God  which  His  mercy  could  cover 
and  forgive  ;  but  there  was  no  such  thing  as  a  sin  which  cast 
its  shadow  upon  the  life  of  God.  And  sin  has  become  to  us 
not  a  ceremonial  accident  which  the  only  soit  of  sacrifices 
man  could  offer  might  atone  for,  but  an  offence  so  awful  in 
its  guilt  as  to  involve  the  passion  of  God  and  the  death  of 
His  Son.  Hence  comes  the  tragedy  of  Christian  experience 
—the  co-existence  and  conflict  in  the  same  soul  of  a  double 
sense,  a  fear  of  sin  that  almost  craves  annihilation,  and  a 


THROUGH    THE   VISION    OF   GOD  373 

love  of  holy  being  that  yearns  towards  the  vision  of  God. 
Yet  these  are  both  due  to  the  action  in  us  of  the  ideal  sinless 
personality,  and  express  the  love  by  which  He  guides  man 
into  the  liiiht  of  life. 


§  IV.     Sinlessness  and  the  Moral  Person 

But  we  here  touch  questions  concerning  the  function  of  the 
sinless  personality  in  religion  and  religious  thought,  and  the 
cause  or  reason  of  His  appearance  in  history,  which  properly 
belong  to  a  later  stage  in  our  discussions,  and  which  must  be 
left  till  then.  There  are,  however,  two  questions  which,  as 
implied  in  the  evangelical  Histories  themselves,  ought  to  be 
noticed  here:  (l)  The  idea  of  moral  perfection  or  sinlessness, 
and  (2)  how  it  affects  our  conception  of  the  person  and  His 
history. 

I.  Sinlessness,  though  a  negative  term,  is  here  used  in  a 
doubly  positive  sense.  It  applies  to  both  nature  and  conduct, 
brings  both  under  the  same  moral  category,  and  so  denotes 
what  a  person  is  as  well  as  what  he  does.  The  two  senses 
are,  indeed,  organically  connected,  since  the  quality  of  the 
nature  is  expressed  in  the  conduct ;  while  the  conduct  reacts 
upon  the  nature,  uplifting  or  depressing  it,  enlarging  or 
diminishing  its  good.  The  ancient  maxim  said  :  "  Good  acts 

o  o 

do  not  make  a  good  man,  but  a  good  man  does  good  acts  ; 
the  good  fruit  is  made  by  the  tree,  not  the  tree  by  the  fruit." 
This  signifies  that  moral  nature  is  more  radical  than  moral 
action,  and,  as  the  prior  in  being,  requires  earlier  and  more 
careful  cultivation.  But  there  is  more  here  than  a  distinction 
of  time  ;  there  is  one  of  cause  and  ground.  Man  gets  his 
nature,  but  he  wills  his  acts;  for  the  first,  others  arc  more 
responsible  than  he;  for  the  second,  he  is  responsible  more 
than  any  others,  though  the  responsibility  is  not  unconditioned. 
A  vast  and  mixed  multitude  of  factors  help  to  determine  the 
coming  and  the  character  of  the  human  being.  He  does  not 


374       SINLESS    NATURE    NOT    EXPLAINED 

begin  to  be  as  an  isolated  unit  or  a  characterless  individual ; 
but  he  exists,  as  it  were,  before  he  is  born.     He  starts  on  his 
career  as  an  historical  and  social  being,  though  his  history  is 
ancestral  rather  than  personal,  and  he  lives  in  society  medi- 
ately rather  than  directly — in  his  family,  not  as  and  for  him- 
self.    And  this  means  that  he  steps  into  a  medium  for  which 
he  has  been  fitted  beforehand,  possessed  of  a  nature  which 
he  has  inherited.     Now  here  we  come  upon  the  fundamental 
difficulty  in  conceiving  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus  : — If  it  be  a 
matter  of  nature  before  it  can  become  a  matter  of  will,  how, 
in  the  case  of  one   who   has  a  human  descent   and  even  an 
historical   genealogy,   shall   we  get  the  nature  good  to  start 
with,  the  unflecked  personality,  the  undefiled  will  ?     Do  we 
not  meet  here  the   need   for  assuming    the    creation    by  the 
direct  act  of  God  of  a  new  type  or  species  of  man,  a  being 
without  father  and  without  mother  ?     The  belief  in  Christ's 
moral  perfection  seems  thus  to   involve  the  occurrence  of  a 
miracle   beside   which   those  described   in    the   Gospels    sink 
into  insignificance.     For  it  is  not  enough  to  affirm  the  super- 
natural conception  ;    the    real   difficulty  is    conception    itself 
under  any  form.     The   man  who   is  born  of  a  woman  is  her 
son,  inherits  her  past,  and  owes  to  what  it  has  made  her  his 
nature    and    nurture.     We    may    find    here    the    reason   that 
induced  the  Roman  Church  to  supplement  the  doctrine  of  the 
supernatural  conception  of  the  Son  by  the  dogma  of  the  im- 
maculate conception  of  the  mother  ;   for  the  dogma  was  even 
more   a   concession  to  timid    logic  than  to   pious  veneration 
for  the  Virgin.     But  it  was  a  concession  to  the  curious  though 
common   logic  that  thinks   it  simplifies   and   safeguards  one 
mystery  by  creating  another  and  greater,  forgetting  that  there 
are   mysteries   which  are  credible  because  they  are  solitary, 
just   as    the   reasons    that   persuade    men    to   believe    in    one 
God   are  all    against  their  believing   in  two.      And   the  logic 
that  justified  the  Roman  dogma  ought,  in  order  to  full  rational 
consistency,  to  have  required   an  enormous  extension  of  the 


BY   ONE    IMMACULATE    CONCEPTION      375 

process  ;  and  argued  that  not  only  Mary,  but  all  her  ancestors 
and  ancestresses  back  to  Adam,  were  immaculately  conceived, 
and  quickened  miraculously  by  grace  and  against  nature. 
And  even  then  the  doctrine  would  not  have  been  safe,  for  the 
only  safety  for  an  incorrupt  nature  would  have  been  existence 
and  growth  in  an  incorrupt  environment.  Innocence  is  no 
match  for  experience,  and  the  battle  can  never  be  equal 
if  innocence,  in  all  the  feebleness  of  infancy,  falls  into  the 
depraved  hands  of  a  deft  and  experienced  age.  Hence  an 
immaculate  conception  were  useless  without  an  immaculate 
family,  and  this  without  an  immaculate  society  and  state, 
which  speedily  brings  us  to  the  logical  but  here  impossible 
conclusion  that,  in  order  to  the  existence  of  a  sinless  per- 
sonality, we  must  have  a  sinless  world. 

Let  us  try,  then,  whether  we  can  find,  without  recourse  to 
so  halting  a  logic,  a  more  valid  and  applicable  idea  of  sinless- 
ness.  The  Evangelists  appear  to  conceive  Jesus  to  be  good 
both  in  nature  and  conduct.  Pie  impersonates  for  them  the 
moral  law  ;  He  judges,  but  is  not  judged,  and  is  beforehand 
described  as  "  holy."  l  But  holy  in  what  sense  ?  Not  in  any 
sense  that  excluded  liability  to  temptation,  which  implies  not 
only  the  ability  to  sin,  but  susceptibility  to  sin's  seductions. 
There  is  a  distinction  between  an  impeccable  and  a  sinless 
nature  ;  the  impeccable  is  incapable  of  sinning  ;  the  sinless 
has  the  capacity  to  sin,  but  has  not  sinned.  It  would  be  quite 
incorrect  to  use  the  term  sinlessness  of  God.  He  is  absolute, 
and  cannot  change  ;  infallible,  and  cannot  err ;  and  so,  to 
ascribe  to  Him  whose  attributes  are  all  positive  a  negative 
quality  would  be  a  logical  impropriety.  But  sinless  is  the 
proper  term  to  use  of  a  nature  which,  with  the  capability  of 
erring,  yet  has  not  erred  ;  it  is  free  from  sin,  yet  possesses  a 
will  that  can  be  tempted  and  may  fall.  The  terms  that  may 
be  used  of  moral  natures  are  these: — Good,  holy,  innocent, 
evil.  "Good"  is  absolute  and  exclusive,  fixed  and  stable, 

1  Luke  i.  35. 


376  WHAT   SINLESSNESS    IS 

untemptable  and  infallible;  "holy"  denotes  a  character 
achieved  and  defined,  a  nature  which  has  learned  obedience  ; 
"  innocence  "  describes  a  being  without  positive  qualities, 
which  has  attained  nothing,  but  may  become  anything — 
a  mere  potentiality,  all  the  possibilities  of  evil  and  good 
lying  latent  within  it ;  "  evil  "  qualifies  a  nature  which  has 
been  tried  and  found  unworthy,  a  will  which  has  sinned 
and  become  depraved.  "  Good  "  is  predicable  of  God  only  ; 
He  alone  as  good  can  neither  be  tempted  nor  sin.  "  Holi- 
ness "  is  the  attribute  of  saints  and  angels,  who  have  been 
sanctified  by  the  truth  and  become  Godlike.  The  "innocent" 
is  the  untried,  who  is  capable  of  becoming  either  angel  or 
devil  ;  while  "  evil,"  as  regards  both  state  and  character,  is 
the  man  who  has  fallen  from  innocence,  whether  his  mind  be 
one  of  penitence  or  obstinacy.  Now,  sinless  is  a  term  which 
may  be  distinguished  from  all  these.  It  is  stronger  than 
innocence,  for  it  implies  tested  faculty — will  tried,  but  not 
overcome.  It  is  more  comprehensive  than  holy,  for  the  holy 
may,  on  the  one  hand,  be  men  saved  from  sin,  and,  on  the 
other,  men  who  have  attained  beatitude  ;  but  the  sinless  has 
done  no  sin,  and  yet  lives  in  deadliest  conflict  with  it  and  in 
sorest  trouble  from  it  Yet  the  basis  or  starting-point  of 
sinlessness  is  innocence,  as  its  end  is  holiness,  which  will  be 
eminent  and  meritorious  in  the  very  degree  it  has  been  at- 
tained without  lapse.  And  so  sinless  is  the  word  which  most 
fitly  describes  Jesus  as  He  was  in  the  days  when  it  became 
God  to  make  Him  "  perfect  through  sufferings."  1  He  had  a 
nature  which  did  no  sin,  but  He  faced  the  sin  which  could 
show  no  mercy  to  His  nature  ;  and  in  trying  to  conquer 
His  will,  it  caused  His  passion  and  compassed  His  death. 
His  humanity  was  no  make-believe,  nor  the  temptation  a 
mere  docetic  process — a  stage  drama  which  He  played  in  the 
actor's  sock  and  buskin — but  a  grim  wrestle  between  the 
tempter  and  the  tempted.  And  it  did  not  end  with  the  forty 

1  Heb.  ii.  10. 


DISTINGUISHED    FROM    INFALLIBILITY    377 

days,  for,  as  Luke  significantly  says,  "  the  devil  departed  from 
Him  for  a  seasdn,"  l  i.e.,  departed  only  to  return  at  many  times 
and  in  many  forms,  in  the  trouble  of  His  soul,-  the  weakness 
of  His  flesh,3  the  agony  of  Gethsemane,1  and  the  desertion  of 
the  cross.3  The  disciples  continued  with  Him  in  His  tempt- 
ations,6 and  knew  Him  to  be  in  all  "  without  sin."7  What 
He  suffered  proved  Him  to  be  of  our  kin  ;  what  He  achieved 
showed  how  much  He  differed  from  all  who  had  been  before 
Him.  The  humanity,  and  the  sufferings  needed  to  test  its 
sinlessness,  were  His,  but  the  fruits  of  His  victory  are  ours. 

Sinlessness  as  thus  construed  denotes  a  moral  quality 
whose  intellectual  equivalent  would  be  freedom  from  error, 
i.e.  a  knowledge  that  so  saw  all  things  as  to  permit  no  ignor- 
ance and  admit  of  no  mistake.  But  a  being  of  whom  this 
could  be  predicated  could  not  be  conceived  as  either  created 
or  dependent.  He  would  require  a  memory  and  an  experi- 
ence that  went  back  to  the  beginning  of  things,  and  an  eye 
that  while  it  saw  everything  misread  nothing.  But  this  is 
the  attribute  which  we  call  in  the  Creator  omniscience,  and 
which  has  nothing  in  any  creature  to  correspond  with  it. 
To  affirm  that  a  given  person  so  knew  what  every  day  and 
every  hour  would  bring  forth,  that  ignorance  of  any  thing  or 
event  was  impossible  to  him,  would  be  to  say  he  was  God 
and  not  man.  But  sinlessness  is  essentially  the  note  of  a 
being  at  once  dependent  and  perfect  ;  for  as  dependent  he  is 
under  law  or  authority,  and  as  perfect  he  must  have  com- 
pletely obeyed.  In  other  words,  the  only  condition  that  will 
save  an  intellect  from  error  is  the  knowledge  of  all  things 
that  have  been,  are,  or  are  to  be  ;  but  the  one  condition 
needed  to  help  men  to  righteousness  is  the  will  to  obey. 
Hence  the  nature  that  cannot  err  is  infallible,  but  the  nature 
that  is  obedient  is  sinless  ;  the  one  term  denotes  a  quality 

1   Luke  iv.  13.  *  John  xii.  27.  8   Matt.  xxvi.  41. 

4  Matt.  xxvi.  38.  5   Matt,  xxvii.  46.  6   Luke  xxii.  28. 

7   Heb.  iv.  15. 


378  SINLESSNESS    AND   HUMANITY 

which  the  nature  has  in  its  own  right,  the  other  a  quality 
which  has  been  acquired  by  the  exercise  of  its  own  freedom. 
Infallibility  inheres  in  the  person  or  society  which  possesses 
it,  the  sovereignty  which  sinlessness  obeys  inheres  in  another. 
Now  it  is  significant  that  Jesus  as  expressly  disclaimed  om- 
niscience as  He  claimed  to  do  always  the  will  of  God.  He 
left  knowledge  of  the  times  and  the  seasons  in  the  hands  of 
the  Father;  but  He  Himself  ever  did  what  was  well-pleasing 
in  the  Father's  sight.  The  note  of  His  person  was  sinless- 
ness  ;  it  was  not  the  omniscience  of  Deity. 

2.  We  are  now  in  a  better  position  to  consider  how  the  idea 
of  sinlessness  affects  our  conception  of  Christ's  person  and 
history.  For  one  thing,  it  is  evident  that  it  is  an  idea  which 
suits  the  historical  person — leaves  Him  the  son  of  Adam 
according  to  the  flesh,  and  the  Son  of  God  according  to  the 
Spirit.  By  virtue  of  the  first  He  was,  while  innocent,  peccable 
and  temptable  ;  by  virtue  of  the  second  He  endured  in  the 
face  of  temptation,  remained  sinless  and  became  holy.  What 
we  call  the  Passion  was  a  real  agony — our  name  for  the  awful 
struggle  of  sin  against  a  pure  and  obedient  will,  and  for  the 
resistance  of  the  will  to  the  sin.  His  was  the  one  will  sin  failed 
to  overcome  ;  and  in  what  sense  its  failure  was  man's  victory 
we  shall  yet  see.  For  a  second  thing,  the  idea  shows  how 
His  humanity  could  be  at  once  real  and  ideal.  Man  as  a 
moral  being  was  designed  for  obedience  ;  through  it  and  in 
it,  and  not  otherwise,  he  could  attain  perfection.  The  man 
wholly  obedient  is  perfectly  moral — a  human  being  as  God 
meant  him  to  be  ;  and  so  he  does  not  so  much  transcend  as 
realize  nature,  though  to  be  the  only  person  in  history  who 
achieves  it  is  to  transcend  empirical  nature  while  realizing  the 
ideal.  For  a  third  thing,  He  who  achieves  this  end  is  not  so 
much  taken  out  of  humanity  as  placed  at  its  head,  and  so 
becomes  "the  Firstborn  among  many  Brethren."1  While 
the  most  eminent,  He  is  also  the  most  imitable,  the  symbol 

1  Rom.  viii.  29. 


IMITABILITY    AND   GODLIKENESS         379 

of  what  obedience  to  the  highest  law  of  being  can  make  the 
man  who  obeys.  For  a  fourth  thing,  it  shows  how  moral 
perfection  realizes  rather  than  disturbs  the  balance  of  man's 
powers.  To  be  sinless  is  to  be  God-like,  but  it  is  to  be  man 
and  not  God.  It  is  to  realize  perfectly  all  that  is  contained 
in  the  creature's  dependence  and  the  Creator's  sovereignty  ;  it 
is  to  accept  and  faithfully  fulfil  the  duties  and  the  relations 
these  terms  denote  and  define.  It  is  to  be  perfect  in  the 
sense,  though  not  in  the  degree,  that  God  is  perfect — to 
be  miniatures  of  Deity,  visible  images  of  the  invisible  God. 
And  so  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus  leaves  us  face  to  face  with 
questions  which  may  yet  carry  us  into  regions  of  high  philo- 
sophical and  historical  discussion. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   RELIGIOUS    PERSONALITY    INTERPRETED    BY   HIMSELF 

A.    THE  TEACHING  AND  THE  PERSON 

THE  character  and  teaching  of  Jesus  are  so  mutually 
elucidative  that  neither  can  be  construed  in  isolation 
from  the  other.  He  could  not  have  spoken  as  He  did  unless 
He  had  been  what  He  was,  nor  being  what  He  was  could  He 
have  continued  dumb.  Their  congruity  is  so  complete  and 
reciprocal  that  the  character  becomes  more  credible  through 
the  word  and  the  word  more  potent  through  the  character. 
It  was  insight  into  their  connexion  and  organic  unity  that 
made  the  Evangelists  so  carefully  incorporate  the  Logia  and 
the  history  ;  they  meant  us  to  read  them  together  even  as  they 
themselves  did,  and  interpret  the  words  through  the  acts, 
the  acts  through  the  words,  and  both  through  the  person. 
Psychology  as  a  science  is  young,  but  as  an  art  is  old  ;  and  it 
is  an  art  without  which  no  one  can  be  eminent  either  as 
biographer  or  as  historian.  For  it  signifies  the  faculty  that 
sees  in  character  the  reason  of  conduct  and  speech,  and  reads 
speech  and  conduct  as  the  expression  and  counterpart  of 
character.  History  and  the  drama  are  both  alike  children  of 
the  imagination  ;  and  the  more  constructive  the  imagination 
the  more  perfect  will  its  products  be.  The  dramatist  sees  a 
character,  and  through  it  and  for  its  embodiment  he  con- 
ceives a  history,  in  order  that  he  may  enable  others  to  see 
what  he  has  seen.  The  historian  by  a  study  of  words  and 
acts  gets  to  know  the  men  who  constitute  his  history,  and 

then   he   writes  it  in  order   that,  by  placing  the   events  he 

380 


THE    NEW    CONSENSUS    GENTIUM           381 

narrates,  as  well  as  the  ideas  and  motives  he  describes,  in  rela- 
tion to  their  causes  in  the  men  he  knows,  he  may  make  the 
moment  it  covers  an  intelligible,  if  not  a  consistent  and 
rational,  whole.  Hence  where  documents  and  occurrences, 
literature  and  history  are  so  indissolubly  interwoven  as  they 
are  in  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  the  critic  needs  both  historical 
imagination  and  philological  knowledge.  Without  the  former 
he  cannot  turn  the  latter  to  any  real  account.  The  Jesus 
of  criticism  easily  becomes  even  more  unhistorical  and  in- 
conceivable than  the  Jesus  of  dogma,  without  coherence, 
without  reality,  too  shadowy  to  be  grasped,  too  subjective  to 
be  a  real  person  in  history.  Hence  it  may  be  well  if  we 
substitute  for  the  critical  the  psychological  method  and 
attempt  to  construe  Jesus  from  within,  i.e.  look  at  His  acts 
and  achievements  through  His  consciousness. 

§  I.      The   Teaching  and  its  External  Characteristics 

I.  We  are  of  course  here  concerned  with  Jesus  under  a 
special  category,  as  the  Founder  of  a  religion  ;  and  what  we 
have  to  discover  is  not  simply  what  the  Evangelists  thought 
and  meant  us  to  think,  but  still  more  whether  He  Himself 
had  any  consciousness  of  the  work  He  was  doing,  or  was  to 
cause  to  be  done.  And  at  the  very  outset  we  may  be  sur- 
prised at  what  may  seem  a  serious  paradox.  While  there  is 
in  no  religion  any  proper  parallel  to  the  claims  made  by  His 
church  on  behalf  of  His  person,  there  are  yet  in  most  of  the 
historical  faiths  parallels  to  His  most  characteristic  sayings. 
But  this  can  only  surprise  those  who  forget  the  catholicity 
of  His  manhood.  What  used  to  be  known  as  the  consensus 
gentium,  or  the  agreement  of  all  peoples  and  religions  in 
certain  beliefs,  was  held  to  be  a  cogent  witness  to  the  truth  of 
these  beliefs  ;  and  so  it  is  but  natural  that  He  who  is  con- 
ceived as  if  He  were  universal  Man  should  in  a  language 
understood  of  all  men  express  ideas  implicit  in  all.  That 
Christ's  teaching  as  to  peace,  humility,  and  forgiveness  should 


382  HE    IS    WHAT    HE    TEACHES 

be  anticipated  by  the  Tao-teh  King  as  well  as  by  certain 
Jewish  Rabbis,  or  that  the  Confucian  classics  should  contain 
His  Golden  Rule,  even  though  it  be  in  a  negative  form,  ought 
to  be  no  more  extraordinary  than  that  the  belief  in  Deity 
should  be  common  to  all  religions.  That  the  Dhammapada 
should  contain  precepts  on  self-denial,  renunciation,  disciple- 
ship,  and  the  service  of  one's  neighbour,  or  that  the  Bhagavad- 
Gita  should  speak  of  God's  indwelling  in  the  soul  and  the 
soul's  thirst  for  God,  in  terms  not  unworthy  of  Jesus,  is  no 
more  wonderful  than  that  similar  ethical  ideas  should  have 
been  incorporated  in  dissimilar  natural  religions.  That  Plato 
should  have  written  of  truth  and  beauty,  Paul  of  charity,  and 
John  of  love  with  a  sublimity  and  a  tenderness  that  would  have 
become  the  Master,  is  what  is  to  be  expected  of  the  soul  that  in 
its  serener  and  saner  moments  knows  itself  to  be  the  son  of 
God.  The  fact,  then,  that  the  human  spirit  in  its  most  exalted 
moods  has  uttered  thoughts  akin  to  His  ought  not  to  make  us 
disesteem  the  truths  the  man  in  Him  speaks  to  the  man  in 
us,  but  rather  to  esteem  them  the  more  highly.  This  con- 
sonance of  His  mind  with  the  ideal  in  ours  has  its  counter- 
part in  the  agreement  of  thought  and  being,  speech  and 
character,  idea  and  reality  in  Himself;  and  these  two 
harmonies  signify  that  He  possesses  veracity  of  nature  in  its 
completest  and  most  excellent  form,  realization  of  the  idea  of 
humanity  and  obedience  to  its  truth. 

2.  As  to  its  external  characteristics,  the  teaching  is  so 
small  in  quantity,  that  sifted  from  the  narrative  in  which  it  is 
embedded  it  could  be  written  on  a  few  sheets  of  paper  and 
read  in  an  hour.  It  was  the  product  of  a  ministry  so  brief  as 
to  be  confined  within  a  period  more  fitly  reckoned  by  months 
than  by  years.  It  is  without  elaboration,  so  much  so  that 
Pascal  was  justified  in  saying,  that  Jesus  said  the  deepest 
things  so  spontaneously  and  simply  that  it  almost  looked  as 
if  He  did  it  without  pre-meditation.  He  was  so  careless  as 
to  its  preservation  that  He  never  wrote  anything  Himself,  of 


HIS    SIMPLICITY    AND   SPONTANEITY      383 

commanded  anything  to  be  written,  or  selected  any  disciple 
because  of  his  facility  with  the  pen.  His  words  are  in  the 
strictest  sense  spoken  words  cast  into  the  air  like  seeds  which 
the  vagrant  winds  are  free  to  carry  whithersoever  they  list. 
And  His  teaching  makes  no  claim  to  respect  as  literature,  is 
without  pomp  of  diction,  elegance,  preciosity,  classicism,  or 
any  quality  of  style  which  betokens  the  influence  of  academy 
or  school.  He  was  but  a  rustic  teacher,  uneducated  even  to 
the  unlettered  men  of  Galilee,  speaking  on  the  hillside  or  by 
the  seashore,  on  the  village  green  or  in  some  squalid  syna- 
gogue, on  the  highway  thronged  by  pilgrims  or  in  the  city 
where  the  reign  of  passion  would  not  allow  the  people  to  hear 
with  reason.  And  the  men  he  addressed  were  even  more 
rustic  than  Himself,  sons  of  the  soil  and  of  the  lake,  whose 
speech  was  a  dialect  which  the  scholar  had  not  touched  or  the 
man  of  letters  polished.  And  the  forms  His  discourses  took 
were  as  simple  as  His  language  and  His  audience: — the 
parable  which  the  Oriental  finds  so  natural,  so  easily  uses  and 
so  well  understands  ;  the  quaintly  humble  tale  which  speaks 
to  his  imagination  more  clearly  than  the  most  luminous 
argument  ;  the  proverb  which  invites  endless  explanation  and 
application  ;  the  sharp  question  or  the  unexpected  retort 
which  grew  out  of  His  controversies  with  the  Pharisees  and 
priests,  or  His  discussions  with  His  disciples  ;  the  reflection 
on  nature  and  man,  on  the  wayside  incident,  or  the  event  in 
sacred  history  ;  the  overheard  meditation,  where  the  soul  is 
surprised  out  of  the  deep  secret  it  thinks  it  speaks  to  God 
alone.  Yet  in  all  its  forms  His  speech  is  living,  swift  and 
moving,  condensed  and  pregnant,  charged  with  the  thought 
that  cannot  be  shut  up  in  the  closet  but  must  live  in  the 
minds  and  on  the  lips  of  men. 

Hut  His  discourses  have  so  marvellous  a  hold  on  reality 
that  their  place,  their  time,  and  their  whole  social  environment 
may  be  seen  reflected  as  in  a  mirror.  Nature  is  there  as  she 
lies  under  the  clear  Syrian  sky.  The  lily  blooms  in  a  beaut)' 


384      NATURE   AND   MAN    AS    REFLECTED 

that  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  fails  to  rival,  while  the  great 
trees  spread  their  branches  in  the  radiant  air,  the  birds  build 
their  nests  in  them,  feed  their  young,  and  are  fed  by  the 
heavenly  Father.  The  vines  tended  by  the  vinedresser  grow  on 
the  hillsides  ;  the  fig-tree  blossoms  on  the  plain,  and  speaks 
now  of  the  summer  which  may  tarry  long  yet  so  surely 
comes,  and  now,  laden  with  figs,  of  realized  hopes,  or,  again, 
bearing  nothing  but  leaves,  of  unfulfilled  promises.  The 
yoked  oxen  plough  the  fields ;  in  the  furrows  they  have 
made  the  sower  walks  casting  his  seed  into  the  prepared 
ground  ;  while  later  the  corn,  white  unto  the  harvest,  covers 
the  dark  earth,  and  men  as  they  watch  it  ripening  pluck  the 
golden  ears  and  rub  them  in  their  hands.  The  lake,  like  a 
living  eye,  looks  out  on  the  landscape,  and  the  heavens, 
whether  in  sunlight  or  in  starlight,  look  down  into  the  lake, 
which  now  rises  tossed  and  angry  at  the  stroke  of  the  sudden 
tempest,  and  now  lies  placid  and  fair  inviting  men  to  come  and 
listen  while  He  speaks  by  its  brink.  And  man  is  there  as 
well  as  nature.  The  fishermen,  to  His  eye  potential  apostles, 
to  other  eyes  but  ignorant  and  unlearned  men,  sit  in  the 
shadow  of  their  boats  mending  their  nets,  or  fare  forth  upon 
the  lake  and  cast  them  into  the  sea,  drawing  them  in  here 
empty,  and  there  so  full  that  they  break  with  their  burden,  or, 
again,  leaving  them  behind  in  despair  of  their  own  lives 
endangered  by  some  furious  squall.  Women  toil  and  spin 
and  grind  at  the  mill,  draw  water  from  the  well,  seek  health 
of  the  physicians,  sin  in  the  city,  or  minister  in  the  home,  where 
sisters  are  jealous  and  differ  from  difference  of  temper,  where 
the  housewife  lights  the  lamp,  sweeps  the  house,  rejoices  or 
sorrows  with  her  neighbours,  and  delights  to  call  them  in  to 
share  her  own  happiness  and  celebrate  it  with  a  feast.  There 
is  nowhere  so  fine  or  so  pure  a  picture  of  eternal  womanliness, 
the  nature  that  is  so  swift  to  see,  so  keen  to  feel,  so  shameless 
in  its  sinning,  so  splendid  in  its  penitence,  so  quick  in  its 
gratitude,  so  ungrudging  in  its  service,  and  so  absolute  in  its 


IN    THE   TEACHING   OF   JESUS  385 

devotion.  Infants  come  in  their  mother's  arms  to  be  blessed 
and  to  be  pointed  out  as  types  of  life  within  the  kingdom. 
Children  play  in  the  market  place,  making  games  for  their 
amusement  out  of  the  serious  business  of  their  elders  ; 
they  sleep  with  the  father  in  the  bedchamber,  or  they  sit  at 
table,  eat,  and  are  filled  while  the  hungry  dogs  watch  for  the 
crumbs.  Brothers  differ  over  their  inheritance;  sons  are  by 
their  expectations  made  suspicious  of  their  father,  the  rectitu- 
dinous  fearing  he  may  prove  indulgent  to  the  profligate  ;  while 
fathers  think  that  sons  dear  to  them  will  be  as  dear  to  their 
neighbours  and  dependents.  In  the  city  the  poor  and  maimed, 
the  blind  and  lame,  are  crowded  together ;  in  the  market- 
place where  the  children  play  the  weary  labourer  stands 
wraiting  to  be  hired,  and  often  waits  in  vain.  The  rich  men 
live  in  stately  houses,  are  clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen, 
"  and  fare  sumptuously  every  day ";  while  servants  wait  at 
their  tables,  and  guests  come  by  invitation,  each  at  once  clad 
in  fit  raiment  and  expected  to  know  his  proper  place. 
There  are  slaves  that  may  be  beaten,  and  to  them  the  fore- 
man is  harsher  than  the  master  ;  and  there  are  workmen  who 
may  be  paid,  and  they  are  easily  discontented  with  their 
wages.  On  the  bench  there  sits  a  judge  of  a  genuinely  oriental 
type,  terrible  to  the  poor  and  the  weak,  for  he  neither  "  fears 
God  nor  regards  man."  On  the  road  from  the  capital  to  the 
provinces  priests  travel  absorbed  in  a  pride  that  will  not  allow 
them  to  notice  the  man  who  has  fallen  among  thieves.  At 
the  street  corner  the  Pharisee  carries  himself  disdainfully 
before  men  ;  in  the  temple  he  boasts  his  almsgiving  and 
fasting,  and  bears  himself  proudly  before  God,  while  the 
publican  tries  to  stand  hidden  from  hard  and  curious  eyes, 
and  does  not  dare  to  look  up  into  the  face  of  heaven.  The 
representative  of  Caesar  lives  and  acts  like  a  Roman  ;  the 
people  hate  him  and  fear  him;  the  sects  discuss,  academically, 
questions  concerning  the  tribute  money,  which  their  scrupu- 
lous consciences  would  fain  refuse  to  pay,  though  they  are 
P.C.R.  25 


386  THE    REAL   WORLD    INVOLVES 

not  strong  enough  to  withstand  prudence  prompted  by  com- 
pulsion. The  whole  Jewish  world  is  there,  a  compact,  coherent, 
living  world,  which  we  can  re-articulate,  re-vivify,  and  visualize, 
even  though  the  magic  mirror  in  which  we  behold  it  is  the 
teaching  which  reveals  the  kingdom  of  Heaven. 

o  o 

3.  But  these  characteristics  though  we  have  named  them 
external  have  yet  an  intrinsic  significance. 

i.  They  have  for  the  evangelical  history  a  positive  critical 
and  constructive  value.  Where  the  world  which  surrounds 
a  man  is  marked  by  so  much  actuality  he  himself  can  hardly 
have  been  a  shadow.  The  mythical  imagination  clothes 
the  figures  it  idealizes  in  forms  supplied  by  its  own  experi- 
ence, i.e.  its  hero,  though  his  attributes  may  be  those  of  more 
ancient  men,  is  placed  in  a  world  which  is  neither  his  nor 
theirs,  but  that  of  the  men  who  write  their  mythological  dreams. 
Hence  it  is  certain  to  be  a  world  full  of  anachronisms,  incred- 
ible through  the  inconsistencies  and  mistakes  of  its  makers. 
But  the  teaching  of  Jesus  lives  and  moves  and  is  evolved  in  a 
consistent  and  actual  world.  The  men  around  Him  are  real, 
belong  to  their  own  time  and  state,  and  to  no  other  ;  we  can 
mingle  with  them,  think  as  thev  thought,  hear  as  thev  heard. 

o  *>  o  *< 

tell  their  province  from  their  features,  their  class  by  their 
manners,  their  race  and  rank  by  their  tongues.  The  critic  loves 
to  test  a  document  by  the  conditions  of  its  time,  or  the  authen- 
ticity of  an  obscure  history  by  the  public  events  with  which  it 
synchronizes.  But  here  he  has  few  sources  that  he  can  freely 
use.  The  Syrian  province  was  too  remote  from  Rome  to 
excite  much  interest  there  ;  Roman  writers  were  few  ;  of  all 
her  pro-consuls  and  soldiers  but  one  had  the  splendid  good 
fortune  to  call  a  Tacitus  son-in-law.  The  Jewish  references 
to  Jesus,  Talmuciic  or  Hellenistic,  are  either  too  late  and 
polemical,  or  of  too  uncertain  authenticity  or  date  to  be 
used  as  fixed  standards  of  judgment.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  is  from  Christian  sources  that  we  derive  the  fullest  and 
most  trustworthy  knowledge  of  the  events,  the  acts,  and  the 


THE    REALITY   OF   THE    HISTORY         387 

persons  that  bring  Jesus  into  relation  with  the  written  history 
of  the  time  ;  but  this  does  not  mean  that  we  are  without 
sufficient  tests  of  authenticity.  Far  more  even  than  in 
Josephus,  or  the  Jewish  apocryphal  literature,  or  the  Roman 
publicists  and  historians,  can  we  find  within  the  Gospels 
themselves  the  material  which  constructive  criticism  can  wisely 
trust  and  safely  use.  They  do  not  so  much  narrate  a  personal 
history  as  incorporate  a  whole  society  ;  though  they  do  it 
without  intention  and  without  design,  yet  they  do  it  so  com- 
pletely that  we  may  search  ancient  literature,  not  excluding 
the  history  of  Thucydides,  or  the  political  treatises  of  Aris- 
totle, without  finding  anything  so  exhaustively  done.  And 
the  society  they  describe  is  so  real,  the  men  who  constitute  it 
so  actual  and  all  so  group  themselves  round  the  central  figure 
that  their  actuality  becomes  a  guarantee  of  His.1  It  is  not 
thus  that  either  conscious  or  unconscious  invention  works.  If 
fiction  or  idealization  steals  into  the  portrait  of  the  hero,  it 
cannot  be  excluded  from  the  environment.  The  background 
and  the  figure  in  the  front  must  be  adjusted  to  each  other, 
and  where  nature  has  so  supplied  the  scene  we  may  be  sure 
that  art  has  not  been  the  maker  of  the  person. 

ii.  But  if  Jesus  becomes  as  actual  as  the  society  in  which 
He  moved,  then  it  is  evident  that  He  cannot  be  conceived  as 
a  detached  or  separated  being  who  lived  in  an  abstract  or  ideal 
state.  His  humanity  becomes  as  real  as  ours  ;  He  enters  into 
our  common  lot,  bears  our  name,  feels  our  pains,  knows  our 
weakness  and  our  greatness.  He  has  fallen  under  the  charm 
and  the  tyranny  of  Nature,  has  experienced  the  fascination 
and  vexation  of  home,  has  felt  on  him  the  thousand  plastic 
hands  of  society,  and  has  known  how  much  it  can  do  to 
mould  man  and  how  little  he  can  do  to  change  it.  All  man 
has  is  H is,  and  He  has  what  is  man's.  The  actual  things  of 
time  are  not  to  Him  dreams  or  shadows  in  the  imagination, 
but  realities,  matters  of  experience  which  have  entered  into 
1  Ante,  pp.  328-529. 


388  HIS    TEACHING   TIMELESS,    PLACELESS 

His  soul  as  deeply  as  into  ours.  The  Jesus  who  teaches  in 
the  Gospels  is  to  the  Evangelists  the  most  actual  being  in  the 
scene  they  describe. 

iii.  The  teaching  of  Jesus,  though  embedded  in  a  world  of 
such  severe  actuality,  is  not  made  by  it  local  or  provincial  ; 
on  the  contrary,  what  we  may  call  its  timeless  and  placeless 
note  seems  only  the  more  accentuated  by  its  narrow  medium. 
The  social  conditions  amid  which  it  was  born,  and  the  lan- 
guage in  which  it  was  delivered,  do  not  stamp  it  with  their 
racial  character  and  limitations.  The  sacred  books  of  the 
religions  are,  as  a  rule,  preserved  in  sacred  tongues  ;  while 
translation  diminishes  their  significance  for  the  scholar,  it 
tends  to  destroy  their  sanctity  for  the  people.  The  Chinese 
classics  must  be  written  in  the  language  and  with  the  signs 
the  Chinaman  knows  if  they  are  to  possess  for  him  any  literary 
and  religious  worth ;  done  into  English  they  have  become 
books  to  inform  the  western  man,  and  have  ceased  to  be 
authorities  for  the  native  mind.  The  Sanskrit  of  the  Rig 
Veda  and  the  Upanishads,  of  the  Epics  and  the  Philosophies, 
is  sacred  to  the  Hindu  people;  to  know  it  is  to  hold  the  key 
of  wisdom  and  of  truth  ;  to  discover  it  required  all  the  tact 
and  patience  and  courage  of  noted  European  scholars. 
Hebrew  is  the  tongue  in  which  the  Jew  praises  God,  and 
without  it  his  soul  would  be  deprived  of  the  speech 
which  is  to  him  his  religion.  The  Koran  made  the 
Arabic  in  which  it  was  written  classical ;  the  dialect  of  the 
prophet  became  the  standard  of  art  and  elegance.  But 
the  words  of  Jesus  do  not  constitute  a  sacred  language  ; 
we  do  not  possess  His  teaching  in  the  tongue  He  knew  and 
employed.  It  came  to  us  in  a  translation,  and  has  lived  in 
translations  ever  since,  multiplying  itself  endlessly  without 
ever  seeming  to  lose  its  vital  energy.  And  this  means  that 
it  has  the  marvellous  faculty  of  being  at  home  everywhere, 
intelligible  in  every  speech,  comprehensible  to  every  mind, 
without  country  or  time,  because  so  akin  to  universal  man. 


AND  THE    SOVEREIGN    IDEALISM          389 

And  it  is  more  than  curious  that  the  teaching  of  which  this 
can  be  said  is  so  marked  by  the  actualities  of  the  hour  and 
the  place  of  its  birth. 

iv.  But  what  is  still  more  of  a  paradox  is  the  substance 
and  scope  of  the  teaching  which  appears  in  this  narrow  and 
local  and  sordid  medium.  We  may  call  it  the  sovereign 
idealism  of  the  world  ;  and  this  would  be  the  sober  truth,  yet 
not  the  whole  truth.  It  would  also  be  true  to  say,  though 
compared  with  the  whole  it  means  little  when  said,  that  Jesus 
dignified  and  enlarged  whatever  He  touched,  and  He  touched 
all  man's  deepest  beliefs,  his  most  regulative  and  commanding 
ideals.  God  He  translated  into  Father,  and  made  man  con- 
ceive the  Being  he  most  dreaded  as  the  Being  who  most  loved 

O  «-> 

him  and  whom  he  must  love.  Man  He  interpretated  by  son, 
raised  him  to  a  majesty  before  which  the  accidents  of  birth 
and  state  were  humbled  when  they  thought  themselves  noble, 
and  ennobled  when  they  knew  themselves  mean  ;  and  set  him 
as  a  being  of  infinite  worth  face  to  face  with  the  infinite  God. 

o 

Duty  he  lifted  from  the  dust  into  which  it  had  fallen,  and 
turned  it  into  the  obligation  to  be  perfect  as  the  Father  in 
heaven  is  perfect.  Love  He  purified  from  passion,  and  quali- 
fied it  to  be  the  bond  which  bound  man  to  God,  united  man 
to  man,  organized  life  into  a  body  of  obedience  and  a  realm 
of  reciprocal  service.  On  the  basis  of  love  to  God  and  man 
He  built  up  a  kingdom,  out  of  which  the  wicked  in  His 
wickedness  was  excluded,  but  into  which  the  most  wicked 
could  by  conversion  enter  and  become  the  most  holy.  In 
this  kingdom  all  men  were  to  be  brothers  and  all  sons  of 
God  ;  their  worship  of  Him  was  to  be  a  service  of  love  ex- 
pressed in  obedience  and  realized  within  the  community  of 
saints.  Instead  of  outside  rules  an  internal  law  was  to  reign  ; 
men  were  to  live  in  the  Spirit  and  speak  in  the  truth,  governed 
by  a  love  which  would  not  allow  any  one  to  exult  in  another's 
evil  or  rejoice  in  another's  pain,  but  which  moved  all  to  a 
universal  beneficence.  It  was  a  new  idea  of  God,  of  man,  of 


390       WHAT    HIS    WORD    HAS    ACHIEVED 

religion,  each  of  these  singly,  all  of  them  together,  and  all 
conceived  as  man's  and  not  as  limited  to  any  elect  race  or 
conditioned  by  any  sacred  class.  It  was  wonderful  that  a 
universal  idealism  so  immense  and  mighty  should  have  so 
lowly  an  origin,  and  come  to  be  in  a  world  so  prejudiced, 
pragmatical  and  divided. 

v.  The  influence  exercised  by  this  teaching  stands  in  signifi- 
cant contrast  alike  to  its  origin,  to  its  quantity,  and  to  its 
literary  quality.  While  it  did  not  begin  to  be  as  literature,  it 
has  done  more  to  create  learning  and  letters  than  all  the  sacred 
books  of  the  world.  More  scholars  are  employed  on  it  than 
on  the  literatures  of  Greece  and  Rome,  while  speculation, 
poetry,  and  everything  that  can  be  termed  imagination  in 
modern  men  have  owed  to  it  exaltation  and  inspiration.  The 
art  and  civilization  of  Europe  are  its  creation  ;  it  has  this 
significant  distinction,  which  it  shares  with  the  words  of  no 
other  teacher  known  in  the  West — men  study  it  as  an  ideal  of 
life,  which  they  personally,  and  the  State  collectively,  are  bound 
to  realize.  The  most  serious  reproach  to  a  Christian  man  or 
society  is  to  have  failed  to  obey  the  law  of  Christ.  And  the 
teaching  is  conceived  to  have  authority  because  the  Teacher  is 
believed  to  live  ;  its  power  to  govern  and  to  bind  reposes  on 
the  idea  of  His  personal  sovereignty.  But  the  external 
characteristics  so  regarded  and  construed,  cease  to  be  external 
and  become  invested  with  high  critical  significance  ;  for  they 
show  that  the  teaching  can  be  as  little  explained  by  the 
origin,  the  distribution,  and  the  use  of  the  Logia  as  the  reason 
which  is  man  can  be  explained  by  the  anatomy  of  his  body. 
Anatomy  is  a  real  science,  but  it  is  not  a  complete  anthro- 
pology; were  it  to  claim  to  be  such,  it  would  only  become 
ridiculous  ;  and  the  criticism  which  handles  documents  would 
earn  a  similar  epithet  if  it  were  to  speak  as  a  sufficient  philo- 
sophy of  the  Christian  religion. 


HAS    NOT   CREATED   CHRISTIANITY       391 

§  II.     HOUJ  Jesus   Conceives  and  Describes  Himself 

From  this  discussion  of  the  teaching  in  its  external 
characteristics  \ve  must  now  pass  to  what  is  indeed  the 
main  question  it  raises :  How  did  Jesus  conceive  Himself 
and  His  special  function  in  religion  ?  One  thing  is  certain  : 
the  teaching  by  itself  could  not  have  created  Christianity  or 
achieved  universal  significance.  It  does  not  cover  the  whole 
of  life,  whether  individual  or  collective,  nor  does  it  even 
profess  to  deal  with  some  of  man's  gravest  problems,  intel- 
lectual, ethical,  and  religious.  There  have  been  crises  in 
every  State,  nay,  in  every  real  personal  history,  where,  if 
it  had  been  the  only  guide,  it  would  have  to  be  described 
as  "  the  light  that  failed."  Hut  the  programme  of  the 
religion  lies  in  the  person  of  the  Founder  rather  than  in 
His  words,  in  what  He  was  more  than  in  what  He  said. 
1  his  may  seem  an  anomaly,  especially  to  an  age  accustomed 
to  think  that  it  believes  "the  truth  for  the  truth's  sake "; 
but  it  is  natural  that  words  conceived  as  the  vehicle  and 
mirror  of  a  transcendental  personality  should  become  to  the 
reason  symbolical  of  all  the  mysteries  and  all  the  authorities 
that  meet  in  Him.  Still,  if  this  be  so,  the  function  we  assign 
to  His  person  must  not  be  inconsistent  with  His  idea  of 
Himself,  with  the  nature  of  things,  or  the  course  of  history. 
Hence  what  here  concerns  us  is  His  idea  of  Himself  and 
the  part  this  idea  played  in  the  creation  of  the  Christian 
religion. 

I.   And    at    the   outset   we   have    a    most  significant  thing 

o  o 

to  note,  the  comparative  reserve  or  even  reticence  touching 
Himself  which  lie  maintains  during  His  earlier  ministry. 
He  is  clear  and  emphatic  enough  when  lie  speaks  to  His 
disciples  of  God,  or  the  kingdom  and  its  laws  ;  but  concerning 
Himself  lie  speaks  not  so  much  in  parables  as  darkly  and 
suggestively.  He  appears  to  have  desired  that  their  con- 
ception of  Him  should  be  of  their  own  forming  rather  than 


392  HE    INTERPRETS    HIMSELF 

of  His  communicating,  a  belief  reached  through  the  exercise 
of  their  own  reason  and  not  simply  received  on  His  authority. 
His  method  was  to  proceed  through  familiarity  to  supremacy, 
not  through  sovereignty  to  dominion.  If  the  discipleship 
had  been  formed  on  the  basis  of  His  divine  pre-eminence, 
it  would  have  had  no  reality,  for  He  would  never  have  got 
near  the  men,  and  they  would  never  have  come  near  to 
Him  ;  aloofness  would  have  marked  His  way  and  they 
would  have  walked  as  if  divided  from  Him  by  an  impassable 
gulf.  And  so  it  was  as  a  man  of  whom  they  could  learn, 
addressing  men  who  would  learn  of  Him  that  He  called 
them.  And  He  forced  nothing,  stimulated  but  did  not 
supersede  the  action  of  their  own  minds  ;  and  when  He 
asked  His  great  question,  "  Whom  say  ye  that  I  am  ? "  * 
it  was  as  if  He  nad  inquired,  "  What  conclusion  have  you 
as  reasonable  men  been  compelled  to  draw  from  the  things 
which  you  have  seen  and  heard  ? "  This  method  of  Jesus 
explains  two  things  :  (a)  the  relative  lateness  of  the  period 
at  which  He  invited  the  confession.  It  was  the  issue  of 
a  lengthened  process  in  slow  and  simple  minds,  and  to  have 
hurried  the  process  would  have  been  to  spoil  the  issue. 
(/3)  The  immediate  and  consequent  emergence  of  a  new 
type  of  teaching,  which  may  be  described  as  more  concerned 
with  Himself  than  the  old,  and  especially  with  the  work 
required  of  Him  as  the  Founder  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

2.  But  though  we  must  recognize,  because  of  the  reasons 
that  prompted  it,  this  early  reserve  as  to  the  interpretation 
of  His  person,  yet  we  must  also  emphasize  the  fact  that 
from  the  beginning  He  made  on  His  own  behalf  the  very 
highest  claims.  Over  against  the  five  negative  and  limitative 
passages  which,  according  to  Schmiedel,  constitute  "  the 
foundation  pillars  for  a  truly  scientific  Life  of  Jesus," 2  I 
would  place  as  more  entitled  to  this  character  the  following 
authentic  and  characteristic  texts  : 

1   Mark  viii.  27-29  ;   Matt.  xvi.  15-16  ;   Luke  ix.  18-20.     *  Ante,  p.  303. 


DEFINES    HIS    PLACE    AND   FUNCTION     393 

i.  He  fulfils  the  law  and  the  prophets.1  The  terms  "  law" 
and  "  prophets  ''  denote  what  we  should  term  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, the  collective  revelation  to  Israel.  This  Jesus  has 
come  to  "  fulfil,"  i.e.  to  realize  its  idea,  to  actualize  its  dream, 
to  accomplish  what  it  tried  but  failed  to  achieve.  He  who 
so  speaks  conceives  Himself  as  more  than  the  law,  as  greater 
than  all  the  prophets,  and  so  He  does  not  explain  as  the 
scribes,2  but  proclaims  as  a  new  ethical  authority  a  new  law3 
and  a  higher  prophecy.4 

ii.  He  comes  "  to  call  not  the  righteous  but  sinners  to 
repentance." 5  This  idea  receives  fuller  and  even  finer 
expression  in  words  we  owe  to  Matthew  : 6  "  Come  unto 
Me,  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I  will  give 
you  rest."  The  consciousness  of  sufficiency  for  the  saving 
of  the  lost  was  never  more  beautifully  expressed  :  it  has 
sounded  through  the  ages  as  an  appeal  more  irresistible 
than  any  command. 

iii.  The  command  which  He  addressed  to  the  disciples, 
"  Come  ye  after  Me," 7  or,  more  briefly  and  emphatically, 
"  Follow  Me." 8  And  some  interesting  contexts  show  the 
absolute  authority  implied  in  this  command.  Thus  the 
scribe  who  professes  himself  willing  to  follow  Jesus  "  whither- 
soever Thou  goest,"  pleads,  when  he  hears  of  the  homeless- 
ness  involved  in  obedience,  to  be  allowed  to  "  go  and  bury 
my  father";  but  the  imperative  words,  pitiless  to  the 
pretence  of  affection,  are  spoken  :  "  Follow  Me,  and  leave 
the  dead  to  bury  their  own  dead." !  Again,  the  young 
ruler,  who  has  inherited  "great  possessions "  and  wishes  to 
inherit  "eternal  life,"  asks  what  he  is  to  do,  and  is  told  : 
"Go,  sell  whatsoever  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor, 

1  Matt.  v.  17-18.  2   Mark  i.  22  ;   Matt.  vii.  27. 

5  Matt.  v.  22,  28.  32,  34,  39,  44.        "    Matt.  xi.  9-11  ;   Luke  vii.  26-8. 

6  Mark  ii.  17  ;   Luke  xix.  10.  l!  xi.  28. 

7  iv.  19.  "   ix.  9. 
"  Matt.  viii.  18-22  ;  Luke  ix.  57-60. 


394    THE    PRE-EMINENCE   OF   THE   PERSON 

and  come,  follow  Me."  l  Jesus  will  brook  no  rival  ;  the 
thing  man  loves  most  he  must  surrender  if  he  would  obey. 
Finally,  He  states  the  terms  of  discipleship  :  the  men  who 
would  follow  Him  must  deny  themselves  and  take  up  the 
cross,2  for  only  so  can  the  soul  be  saved  ;  and  though  a  man 
may  gain  the  world,  yet  if  he  lose  his  own  soul  he  will 
suffer  infinite  loss. 

iv.  He  affirms  in  His  charge  to  the  twelve3  His  personal 
sovereignty  in  the  most  impressive  forms  and  phrases.  They 
are  to  be  persecuted  for  His  sake ;  but  if  they  endure,  He 
will  confess  them  before  the  Father  ;  to  lose  their  life  for 
His  sake  is  to  find  it ;  to  do  the  meanest  service  in  His 
name  is  to  win  an  everlasting  reward. 

v.  And  His  pre-eminence  towards  man  is  reflected  in 
His  uniqueness  towards  God.  He  is  the  Son,  all  things 
have  been  delivered  unto  Him  of  the  Father ;  as  the  Son 
the  Father  alone  knoweth  Him,  and  He  alone  knoweth  the 
Father,  and  without  His  action  as  revealer  the  Father 
cannot  be  known.4 

These  texts  form  an  ascending  series  ;  they  begin  with 
His  relation  to  the  past  ;  the  old  religion  He  at  once 
supersedes  and  fulfils  ;  the  person  to  whom  its  precepts  and 
promises,  its  offices  and  institutions  pointed,  and  in  whom 
they  ended,  is  greater  than  they.  Then  He  defines  His 
relation  to  the  old  mankind :  His  primary  function  is  to 
save  the  lost  ;  and  this  is  followed  by  His  attitude  to  the 
new  mankind  whom  He  calls,  commands,  and  binds  to 
Himself  by  an  affection  which  grudges  no  sacrifice  and  is 
equal  to  any  service.  And  these  claims  represent  a 
sovereignty  which  only  a  singular  and  pre-eminently  privi- 
leged relation  to  the  Father  could  justify.  These  are  claims 
that  become  the  founder  of  a  religion,  and,  admitted  or 
acknowledged,  they  almost  explain  its  founding.  But  claims 

1  Markx.  17-22.  s  Mark  viii.  34-37. 

8  Matt.  x.  16-42.  *  Matt.  xi.  25-27. 


AND   THE   FOUNDING   OF   THE    RELIGION  395 

which  are  to  rule  the  mind  and  the  conscience  must  have 
as  their  ultimate  basis  not  a  spoken  word,  but  an  idea 
which  appeals  to  the  reason  and  satisfies  the  reason  to 
which  it  appeals.  Hence  Jesus  in  asking,  "  Whom  say  ye 
that  I  am?"  consciously  confesses  that  His  religion  will  be 
as  His  person  is  conceived  to  be.  And  so  the  essence  or 
heart  of  the  later  or  higher  teaching  may  be  described  as 
the  creation  of  the  Christian  religion  by  the  interpretation 
of  the  Christ. 

§   III.      The  Person  and  the  Passion 

I.  But  at  this  point  there  comes  a  most  extraordinary  and 
unexpected  development  in  the  teaching.  Coincident  with 
the  new  emphasis  on  His  person  is  the  new  thought  of  His 
passion.  No  one  could  be  less  fitly  described  as  "  the  Man 
of  Sorrows  "  than  the  Jesus  of  the  "  Galilean  springtime." 
The  idea  embodied  in  Holman  Hunt's  The  Shado:v  of  the 
Cross  is  false  to  nature  and  to  history,  for  Christ's  was  too 
fine  a  spirit  to  make  out  of  its  own  sorrow  a  shade  in  which 
those  who  looked  to  Him  for  love  should  sit  cold  and 
fearful  ;  and  we  may  reasonably  infer  that  before  the 
evil  days  came  His  customary  mood  would  be  the  exalta- 
tion born  of  the  splendid  ideal  He  was  to  realize.  The 
morning  of  His  ministry  was  a  golden  dawn  ;  in  His  early 
parables  the  sunny  side  of  life  so  greets  us  that  we  may 
almost  see  the  smile  upon  His  face  answering  the  smile 
upon  the  face  of  Nature.  His  spirit  is  bright,  His  words 
are  serious  without  being  sad,  weighted  with  the  ideas  of 
God,  and  duty,  and  humanity,  but  not  burdened  with  the 
agony  or  wet  as  with  the  sweat  of  Gethsemane.  Yet  even  then 
He  had  thoughts  that  prophesied  the  passion.  They  were 
native  to  Him,  not  given  or  forced  upon  Him  from  without. 
Experience  was  indeed  to  Him,  as  to  us,  a  teacher  ;  and 
as  He  "  learned  obedience  by  the  things  which  He  suffered," 
so,  apart  from  the  same  things,  He  could  not  have  known 


396        OBEDIENCE    THROUGH    SUFFERING 

His  meaning  and  His  mission.  But  these  were  conditions 
rather  than  sources  of  knowledge.  The  notion  of  a  suffering 
Messiah  filled  a  small  place,  if,  indeed,  it  filled  any  place 
at  all,  in  contemporary  Jewish  thought,  but  He  could  not 
study  ancient  prophecy  without  finding  such  a  Messiah 
there.  History  showed  that  the  very  people  who  built  the 
sepulchres  of  the  dead  prophets  had  refused  to  hear  or  even 
to  endure  them  while  they  lived  ;  and  John  the  Baptist,  slain 
by  a  foolish  king  to  gratify  the  malice  of  a  wicked  woman, 
stood  before  Him  as  evidence  of  continuity  in  history.  And 
as  He  preached  the  Kingdom  He  found  that  those  who 
seemed  or  claimed  to  be  its  constituted  guardians  were  His 
most  inveterate  foes  ;  the  scribe  waited  to  catch  Him  in  His 
talk  ;  the  Pharisee  watched  to  charge  His  good  with  being 
evil  ;  the  priests  resisted  Him  in  the  temple,  which  they  had 
made  into  a  mart  for  merchandise.  Opposition  confronted 
Him  at  every  moment  and  in  every  point;  His  idea  of  God's 
righteousness  as  distinguished  from  the  law's  was  made  to 
appear  a  grave  heresy  ;  His  friendship  for  sinners  was  repre- 
sented as  affection  for  sin  ;  His  very  acts  of  beneficence  were 
explained  as  works  of  the  devil,  and  His  doctrine  of  the 
kingdom  was  handled  as  if  it  signified  a  reign  of  lawlessness. 
Such  experiences  could  create  only  one  feeling,  that  the 
enmity  His  ministry  encountered  must  ultimately  fall  upon 
His  person  ;  and  as  He  could  not  surrender  His  mission  He 
must  be  prepared  to  surrender  His  life.  Hence  there  emerges 
a  double  consciousness  attended  by  conflicting  emotions 
which  now  exalt  and  now  depress  Him.  He  sees  the 
necessity  of  His  death,  and  does  not  seek  to  escape  from 
it ;  but  from  the  forces  which  work  it  and  the  form  in  which 
it  comes  He  shrinks  with  horror  and  alarm.  He  perceives 
its  functions  and  issues,  and  He  rejoices  to  give  His  life 
a  ransom  for  many  ;  but,  as  His  life  is  taken  as  well  as 
given,  He  suffers  agony  because  of  those  who  take  it,  even 
while  He  feels  in  the  act  of  surrender  joy  at  doing  His 


EXPERIENCE  FORETELLS  THE  PASSION 

Father's  will.  As  a  result,  those  elements  of  the  sacrifice 
and  death  which  appear  as  the  first  and  most  essential  to 
us,  appeared  as  the  last  and  most  incidental  to  Him.  Yet 
to  those  who  can  follow  and  interpret  His  thought,  the  new 
Passion  is  but  the  old  sovereignty  seen  through  its  issue,  or 
in  the  method  of  its  achievement. 

2.  The  new  development  in  His  teaching  occurs,  then,  at 
the  moment  wher  the  disciples  had  come  to  conceive  Him 
as  the  Christ ;  and  it  is  of  Himself  as  the  now  confessed 
Messiah,  with  distinct  reference  to  the  idea  in  their  minds, 
that  He  speaks.  The  terminology  He  employs  constitutes 
a  sort  of  symbolism.  According  to  Mark  !  and  Luke,2  the 
name  He  uses  to  denote  Himself  as  the  victim  is  "  the  Son 
of  Man."  Whence  this  name  may  have  come  does  not 
specially  concern  us  ;  but  what  does,  is  that  He  uses  it  to 
denote  the  person  who  had  been  termed  "  the  Christ." 
The  words  of  Peter,  both  before  and  after,  show  that  the 
disciples  understood  Jesus  to  mean  by  "  the  Son  of  Man  " 
Himself.  It  is  so  unusual  for  any  one  to  speak  of  himself 
in  the  third  person,  that  it  has  been  argued  that  the  name  is 
not  historical  but  apocalyptic  in  its  associations,  and  denotes 
not  Jesus,  but  another — a  symbolical  being.  But  the  idiom 
is  not  peculiar  to  this  name  ;  in  certain  most  authentic 
texts  Jesus  speaks  of  Himself  as  "the  Son,"3  and  without 
this  form  of  words  it  is  impossible  to  see  how  lie  could 
have  expressed  His  idea.  The  subject  at  certain  supreme 
moments  becomes  an  object  to  Himself;  He  is  more  than 
a  unit,  He  is  a  whole  ;  more  than  an  individual,  He  is  a 
race;  more  than  an  atom,  He  is  a  world.  Any  one  who 
has  studied  Fichte's  use  of  the  term  "  Fgo "  ought  to  have 
no  dilVicultv  in  understanding  Jesus'  usage  of  the  third  as 
well  as  of  the  first  person.  "The  Son  of  Man"  is  the 

1   M.irk  viii.  31-32. 

'2  Luke  ix.  20  22. 

3    Luke   x     17-20  ;     Matt.   xi.    27  ;     Mark   xiii.   32. 


398  THE    SON    OF    MAN 

universal  form  under  which  He  conceives  and  denotes  the 
specific  Jewish  notion  of  the  Messiah.  What  the  one  term 
signified  for  a  single  people,  the  other  signified  for  collective 
man  ;  yet  with  a  difference, — it  was  the  Messiah  conceived 
as  the  suffering  Servant  of  God  ;  the  hope  of  the  people 
become  completely  one  with  the  people,  afflicted  in  all 
their  afflictions,  redeeming  them  by  death.  As,  then,  the 
subject — "the  Christ,"  as  the  disciples  had  named  Him; 
"  the  Son  of  Man,"  as  He  had  named  Himself — is  a  repre- 
sentative person,  so  are  those  who  are  to  be  concerned  in 
His  death :  "  the  elders,  chief  priests,  and  scribes  "  are 
symbolical  of  Israel  acting  in  a  collective  and  solemn 
manner.  "  The  elders  "  are  Israel  as  a  State  ;  "  the  chief 
priests  "  are  Israel  as  a  Church  ;  "  the  scribes "  are  Israel 
as  possessed  of  the  oracles  of  God.  When  they  are  con- 
ceived as  working  together,  their  action  is  conceived  as 
Israel's,  the  work  of  a  civil,  sacerdotal,  and  religious  body 
corporate.  These  contrasted  titles  then — "  the  Christ,"  or 
"  the  Son  of  Man,"  on  the  one  hand,  and  "  the  elders,  chief 
priests,  and  scribes "  on  the  other — can  only  mean  that  the 
acts  in  which  they  were  to  be  respectively  engaged,  bearing, 
suffering,  and  enduring,  causing  and  inflicting,  death,  have 
a  more  than  mere  personal  significance  ;  they  realize  the 
ends  for  which  the  Messiah  stood  by  means  of  the  ideas 
for  which  Israel  was  the  symbol.  Thus  Jesus  conceives  His 
death  as  in  form  a  sacrifice,  a  means  for  the  reconciliation 
of  man  to  God,  though  a  sacrifice  may  have  been  the  last 
thing  it  was  intended  to  be  by  the  men  who  effected 
it.  And  the  rebuke  to  Peter  shows  how  necessary  Jesus 
thought  this  view  of  His  death  was.  His  words  are  remark- 
able :  "  Get  thee  behind  me,  Satan !  for  thou  mindest  not 
the  things  that  be  of  God,  but  the  things  that  be  of  men."1 
It  is  hardly  possible  to  avoid  the  inference  that  there  is 
here  a  reminiscence  of  the  temptation.  Jesus  feels  as  if 
1  Matt.  xvi.  21-23. 


AND   COLLECTIVE    ISRAEL  399 

the  tempter,  disguised  as  Peter,  \vas  once  more  showing 
Him  "all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  "  ; 1  and  He  once  more 
resists  him  and  casts  him  out. 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  culminating  idea  as  to  Himself 
and  His  function  ;  yet  it  is  an  idea  so  extraordinary  and 
unusual,  while  so  distinctive  of  the  religion,  that  we  must 
attempt  to  understand  it  as  it  rises  in  His  consciousness  and 
is  expressed  in  His  teaching.  It  is  so  seldom  that  we  have 
the  opportunity  of  discovering  the  sources  of  a  potent  belief 
and  analyzing  its  primary  form  and  primitive  elements,  that 
one  must  not  be  neglected  when  it  offers  ;  and  we  must  here 
the  more  jealously  use  the  opportunity  that  we  can  compare 
the  present  with  the  later  forms  and  examine  its  action  as  a 
factor  in  the  making  and  in  the  continuance  of  the  religion. 
Our  immediate  purpose,  however,  is  to  find  out  what  the  idea 
signified  to  Jesus  Christ ;  its  worth  for  the  religion  belongs  to 
a  later  stage  in  the  discussion. 

1  Matt.  iv.  10. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   RELIGIOUS   PERSONALITY   AS   INTERPRETED   BY 
HIMSELF 

B.    SIGNIFICANCE  OF  His  DEATH 
§   I.   Growth  of  the  Idea 

I.  "\  7" AGUE  and  general  as  were  the  terms  in  which 
V  Jesus  stated  His  anticipation  of  death,  it  was  yet 
at  once  unwelcome  and  unintelligible  to  His  disciples. 
For  from  this  point  onwards  a  change  which  profoundly 
affects  their  mutual  relations  may  be  seen  in  process. 
Their  agreement  with  Him  as  to  the  central  matter — His 
Messiahship — only  accentuates  the  radical  difference  between 
them  as  to  what  the  Messiah  is  to  be  and  what  He  ought 
to  do.  The  "  Christ "  as  Jesus  conceives  Him  is  devoted  to 
suffering  and  death  ;  but  the  disciples  conceive  the  Messiah 
not  in  terms  they  had  learned  of  Jesus,  but  rather  under  the 
categories  of  local  tradition  and  personal  interest.  The  more 
explicit  His  Messianic  consciousness  grows  the  more  He 
emphasizes  His  death  ;  but  the  more  strongly  they  believe 
in  His  Messiahship  the  less  will  they  permit  themselves  to 
think  of  His  liability  to  a  death  which  they  can  only  construe 
as  defeat.  And  so  there  emerges  the  most  tragic  moment  in 
the  ministry,  the  bewilderment  of  the  disciples  and  their 
alienation  from  the  Master.  The  conflict  which  had  hitherto 
raged  between  Jesus  and  the  Pharisees  is  now  transferred  to 
the  innermost  circle  of  His  friends;  but  with  this  character- 
istic difference  :  while  the  old  conflict  was  open,  frank,  and 


MASTER    AND    DISCIPLES    ESTRANGED    401 

audible,  the  ne\v  was  secret,  sullen,  inarticulate.  The  signs 
of  the  estrangement  are  many.  Their  ambitions  grew  sordid, 
and  they  began  to  feel  as  if  following  Him  were  sheer  loss. 
When  He  said,  "  How  hard  is  it  for  them  who  trust  in  riches 
to  enter  the  kingdom  of  God  " — no  strange  truth  in  His 
mouth — they  were  "  astonished  above  measure,"  and  said  to 
Him,  "Who  then  can  be  saved?"1  Feeling  as  if  this 
doctrine  threatened  them  with  the  lot  of  the  uncompensatecl, 
Peter,  as  ready  a  spokesman  of  suspicion  as  of  faith,  said, 
"  Behold  we  have  forsaken  all  and  followed  Thee ;  what, 
therefore,  shall  we  have?"2  The  natural  result  was  that 
jealousy,  envy,  and  mutual  distrust  wasted  their  brotherhood, 
and  they  disputed  by  the  way  as  to  "  who  should  be  the 
greatest."  :j  Hence  Jesus  had  to  set  the  little  child  in  their 
midst  that  he  might  teach  the  grown  men  how  to  live  in 
trust  and  love.  Even  thus  their  greed  of  place  and  pre- 
eminence was  not  silenced,  for  the  ten  were  moved  to  indig- 
nation by  James  and  John — -two  of  the  most  privileged 
disciples — seeking  to  beguile  the  Master  into  a  promise  to 
give  them  seats,  the  one  at  His  right  hand,  the  other  at  His 
left,  in  His  kingdom.4  So  far  did  they  fall  that  they  attempted 
to  do  His  works  without  His  faith/'  tried  to  hinder  men  doing 
good  in  His  name,1'  and  even  when  His  face  was  towards 
Jerusalem  so  little  had  they  knowledge  of  1 1  is  spirit  or  His 
mission  that  they  asked  authority  to  command  fire  from 
heaven  to  consume  a  Samaritan  village.7  The  picture  of  the 
alienation  is  most  graphic  in  Mark:  "They  were  in  the  way 
going  up  to  Jerusalem,  and  Jesus  went  before  ;  and  they  were 
amazed,  and  as  they  followed  they  were  afraid."8  He  walks 

1   Mark  x.   26  ;     Matt.   xix.    25.  a  Matt.  xix.  27. 

3  Mark  ix.  34.  :    Matt,  xviii.  1-2  ;   Luke  ix.  46-48. 

4  Mark  x.  35-41  ;    Matt.  xx.  20-24. 

5  Mark  ix.  17-19  ;    Matt.  xvii.  19,  20. 
''   Mark  ix.  38-40;    Luke  ix.  49,  50. 

7   Luke  ix.  51-56.  8  x.  32. 

P.C.k.  26 


402     THE  DISCIPLES    RESIST    IDEA    OF    DEATH 

alone,  unheeded  ;  the  words  He  speaks  they  do  not  care  to 
hear,  for  they  are  confounded,  and  walk  as  in  a  vain  show, 
feeling  as  if  the  voice  which  had  created  their  hopes  had 
turned  into  a  contradiction  of  the  hopes  it  had  created. 
This  was  their  mood,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  ever 
escaped  from  it  while  He  lived.  It  helps  to  explain  their 
behaviour  during  the  passion,  which  was  but  the  natural 
expression  of  their  imperfect  sympathy  with  the  Sufferer. 

Jesus'  method  of  dealing  with  this  mood  enables  us  to 
read  more  clearly  His  idea  as  to  His  sufferings  and  death. 
He  met  the  protest  of  Peter  by  a  public  reproof,  for  Mark 
here  has  a  trait  which  Matthew  overlooked  :  "  When  he  had 
turned  about  and  looked  on  the  disciples,  He  rebuked  Peter"1 
— an  act  which  the  apostle  had  evidently  never  forgotten. 
But  much  more  significant  than  the  reproof  is  the  manner 
and  the  circumstances  under  which  He  repeats  and  enforces 
the  teaching  as  to  His  death.  All  the  Synoptists  agree  in 
placing  after  this  incident  the  words  in  which  Jesus  affirms 
that  those  who  follow  Him  must  not  shrink  from  the  fellow- 
ship of  the  cross.2  They  must  deny  themselves,  willingly 
lose  life  for  His  sake  and  the  Gospel's,  live  as  those  who  love 
the  soul  and  fear  no  worldly  loss.  But  not  satisfied  with 
indirect  instruction.  He,  under  conditions  which  speak  of 
exaltation,  returns  to  the  idea  which  they  so  hated.  He 
speaks  of  it  as  they  were  descending  from  the  Mount  of 
Transfiguration.3  While  men  were  wondering  at  the  things 
He  did,  seeing  in  them  "the  mighty  power  of  God,"  He  bade 
His  disciples  let  His  sayings  sink  down  into  their  ears,  "for 
the  Son  of  Man  shall  be  delivered  into  the  hands  of  men."4 
But  one  Evangelist  is  careful  to  add,  "  They  understood  not 

1  viii.  33.  *  Mark  viii.  34-38  ;  Matt.  xvi.  24-28  ;  Luke  ix.  23-27. 

8  Mark  ix.  9,  12  ;  Matt.  xvii.  9,  12.  Luke  makes  "  His  decease  which 
He  was  about  to  accomplish  at  Jerusalem  "  the  subject  on  which  Moses 
.and  Elias  are  said  to  have  discoursed  (ix.  31). 

4  Luke  ix.  43,  44  ;  Mark  ix.  30,  31  ;  Matt.  xvii.  22,  23. 


THE    MASTER    EXPOUNDS    THE    IDEA       403 

this  saying."  l  His  answer  to  James  and  John,  when  they 
wanted  the  Sarnaritan  village  consumed,  was,  "  The  Son  of 
Man  is  not  come  to  destroy  men's  lives,  but  to  save  them  "  ; 2 
which  means,  read  in  its  connexion,  to  save  even  by  suffering 
at  their  hands.  Then  at  the  very  hour  when  the  alienation 
was  most  complete,  He  would  not  hide  the  offence  of  the 
cross  from  their  eyes,  but  once  more  predicted  His  death  and 
the  part  "  the  chief  priests  and  the  scribes  "  were  to  take  in 
it,3  though  even  yet,  as  Luke  says,  "  this  saying  was  hid 
from  them,  neither  understood  they  the  things  which  were 
spoken."4  So  far,  however,  Jesus  has  only  repeated  His 
thought  in  its  original  form,  His  purpose  seeming  to  be  to 
make  it  as  clear  and  distinct  to  the  consciousness  of  the 
Twelve  as  it  was  to  His  own.  He  could  not  attempt  to 
expand  or  explain  it  to  men  who  would  allow  it  no  entrance 
into  their  minds.  But  their  mutual  rivalries,  which  were 
the  fruits  of  their  alienation  from  Him,  created  at  once  the 
opportunity  and  the  need  for  further  exposition  ;  and  He 
added 'to  His  prediction  of  the  fact  and  manner  a  word  as  to 
the  function  and  end  of  the  Messianic  death  :  "  The  Son  of 
Alan  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to 
give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many."  5 

2.  This  saying  marks  a  very  clear  advance  in  the  expres- 
sion of  His  consciousness,  or  the  definition  of  His  own  idea 
as  to  His  death. 

(u)  Baur  argued  that  this  saying  is  so  contrary  to  the 
thought  and  habit  of  Jesus  that  we  must  suppose  He  either 
never  said  it  or  said  it  in  quite  another  form.6  The  exhorta- 
tion to  the  disciples  is  complete  without  it,  and  so,  said  the 
critic,  these  words  were  made  for  Him,  not  used  bv  Him. 
But  it  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  a  more  gratuitous  con- 
jecture. The  words  will  stand  any  test,  critical  or  diacritical, 

1   Luke  ix.  45.  *  Luke  ix.  56. 

'   Mark  x.  33  ;   Matt.  xx.  17-19.         *   l.uke  xviii.  31-34. 

*   Mark  x.  45  ;    Matt.  xx.  28.  a    \cu!t'st.    T/uou'^tt',    IOI. 


404  THE    DEATH    A   RANSOM 

that  can  be  applied  to  them.  The  heart  of  the  narrative 
implies  its  conclusion,  for  what  do  the  "  cup "  He  has  to 
drink,  the  "baptism"  He  is  to  be  baptized  with,  signify? 
Not  surely  the  mere  idea  of  service,  but  the  idea  of  suffering 
endured  to  its  tragic  end.  Here,  if  anywhere,  we  have  a 
Xoyiov  a\ijdiv6v,  spoken  to  jealous,  unsympathetic,  disputa- 
tious disciples,  while  He  and  they  were  going  up  to  Jerusalem. 
It  is  something  to  have  this  fragment  of  authentic  speech, 
which  has,  as  it  were,  seized  and  preserved  His  articulate 
voice  in  the  very  act  of  defining  Himself  and  His  mission. 
It  is  easy  to  import  into  the  clause  too  much  of  our  technical 
theology,  but  it  is  still  easier  to  simplify  it  into  insignificance 
by  attempting  to  keep  all  theology  out  of  it.  The  key  to  its 
meaning  has  been  commonly  found  in  \vrpov,  and  in  a  measure 
correctly.  In  each  of  His  formal  references  in  the  Synoptists 
to  the  death  there  is  a  special  terminus  technicus  which  may 
well  claim  to  be  a  key-word.  In  the  first  it  is  X/HCTTO?, 
in  the  last  Biad^Krj,  here  \vrpov.  Now  \vrpov  is  a  term  easy 
of  interpretation  by  itself,  but  here  the  context  in  which  it 
stands  makes  it  peculiarly  difficult :  for  while  the  persons 
ransomed  are  specified,  He  neither  defines  the  state  out  of 
which,  or  the  state  into  which,  they  are  redeemed,  nor  the 
need  for  the  ransom,  nor  the  person  to  whom  it  was  paid,  nor 
the  precise  respect  in  which  it  is  the  issue  of  His  surrendered 
life.  Ritschl,1  in  an  elaborate  dissertation,  argues  that  \vrpov 
here,  as  in  the  LXX.,  where  it  translates  "133,  signifies  means 
or  instrument  of  protection  (Schutsinittel},  which  may  in 
certain  cases  become  means  or  price  of  release  (Losepreis). 
He  examines  various  typical  texts  in  the  Old  Testament,  and 
comes  to  the  conclusion  that  those  which  present  the  most 
exact  parallel  to  the  words  of  Jesus  are  Psalm  xlix.  7  and 
Job  xxxiii.  24,  and  he  thence  deduces  three  positions  :  (i.) 
that  this  ransom  is  conceived  as  an  offering  to  God  and  not 
to  the  devil  ;  (ii.)  that  Jesus  did  instead  of  the  many,  what  no 
1  Christliche  Lchre  von  der  Rechtfertigung  u.  Versohmtng,  ii.  69-89. 


BUT   FROM    WHOM   OR   FROM    WHAT?     405 

one  either  for  himself  or  for  any  other  could  do  ;  and  (iii.) 
that  Jesus  in  thus  defining  His  work  specifically  distinguishes 
Himself  from  man,  who  must  die,  as  one  who  dies  freely,  or 
who  by  His  own  voluntary  act  surrenders  His  life  to  God. 
So  he  finally  defines  \vrpov  as  "an  offering  which,  because 
of  its  specific  worth  to  God,  is  a  protection  or  covering 
against  death."  The  positions  are  interesting,  and  we  see 
how  they  are  reached,  but  what  we  do  not  see  is  any  con- 
nexion between  the  method  of  reaching  them  and  the  words 
of  Jesus.  Wendt l  is  less  elaborate  and  exhaustive.  He 
argues  that  the  term  is  used  to  express  one  idea — the  deliver- 
ance of  many,  i.e.  "  all  those  who  will  learn  of  Him,"  by 
Christ's  voluntary  sufferings  "from  their  bondage  to  suffering 
and  death  "  ;  but  he  has  nothing  to  say  as  to  the  person  or 
power  to  whom  the  ransom  was  paid.  Beyschlag  -  considers 
the  ransom  not  a  payment  to  God,  but  a  purchase  for  God, 
and  a  being  freed  from  the  dominion  of  a  power  hostile  to 
him,  the  bondage  neither  of  death  nor  even  of  mere  guilt 
but  of  sin. 

(£)  Let  us  reverse  the  order  these  scholars  have  followed, 
and  instead  of  coming  to  the  context  through  the  term,  come 
to  the  term  through  the  context.  The  sons  of  Zebedee  and 
their  mother  had  made  their  request  for  the  two  pre-eminent 
seats  in  the  new  kingdom.  Jesus  in  charity  attributes  their 
request  to  their  ignorance,  and  then  asks,  Were  they  able  to 
drink  His  cup  and  bear  His  baptism  ?  And  they  said  they 
were  able.  The  question  and  the  answer  are  alike  significant. 
The  question  shows  that  His  spirit  was  already  foretasting 
the  passion.  We  see  that  while  they  wrangled  and  schemed 
as  to  who  should  be  pre-eminent,  He  was  feeling  the  awful 
solitude  of  His  sorrow,  the.-  suffering  that  was  His  alone  to 
know  and  to  bear.  Their  answer  illustrates,  more  than  any 
other  utterance  recorded  in  the  Gospels,  the  ignorance  which 


406        CONTRAST    BETWEEN    THE    KINGS 

was  the  root  of  the  alienation  in  which  the  disciples  then 
lived.  It  expressed  a  tragic  temerity,  the  courage  of  the 
childish  or  the  drunken,  who  use  words  but  do  not  know 
what  they  mean.  If  John  ever  recalled  this  moment,  and 
looked  at  it  through  the  memories  of  the  passion,  he  must 
have  experienced  shame  and  humiliation  of  a  kind  which  it 
is  good  even  for  saints  to  feel.  But  though  it  suggests  to  us 
the  audacity  of  the  child  which  now  overwhelms  and  now 
amuses  the  man,  what  it  must  have  signified  to  Jesus  was  the 
distance  between  His  mind  and  theirs,  the  absence  from  their 
consciousness  of  what  were  then  the  most  patent  facts  and 
potent  factors  in  His  own.  So  He  gently  calls  to  Him  the 
disappointed  two  and  the  angry  ten,  though  in  the  ten  the 
very  thoughts  were  active  that  had  moved  the  two  ;  and 
proceeded  once  more  to  explain  His  kingdom  in  its 
antithesis  to  man's.  They  had  construed  His  kingdom 
through  man's  instead  of  through  Himself,  and  so  had  been 
seeking  parallels  where  they  ought  to  have  found  contrasts. 
And  these  contrasts  He  indicates  rather  than  develops. 
(i.)  The  fundamental  difference  was  in  the  persons  who 
exercised  kinghood,  and  therefore  in  the  kinghood  they 
exercised.  In  man's  kingdom  lordship  is  founded  upon 
conquest,  authority  is  based  upon  might,  and  so  the  great 
are  the  strong  who  compel  the  obedience  of  the  weak ; 
but  in  Christ's  the  note  of  eminence  is  service,  "  the  chiefest 
of  all  is  the  servant  of  all."  This,  however  requires  the 
rarest  qualities  :  for  service  of  all  without  moral  elevation 
degrades  both  him  who  gives  and  him  who  takes.  Humility 
without  magnanimity  is  meanness  ;  the  humbleness  that 
glories  in  being  down  invites  the  contempt  of  all  honourable 
men,  for  it  can  neither  climb  up  itself,  nor  lift  up  the  fallen, 
nor  help  up  the  struggling.  The  service  must  therefore  here 
be  interpreted  through  the  ideal  Servant,  "  the  Son  of  man." 
"  Lordship  "  of  the  heroic  order  is  not  a  difficult  thing  to 
attain,  for  men  of  marked  moral  inferiority  have  attained  it : 


THE   KINGDOMS,  THEIR   MEANS  AND  ENDS  407 

Alexander,  who  was  a  youth  of  ungoverned  passions  ;  Caesar, 
who  was  a  statesman  more  astute  than  scrupulous  ;  Napoleon, 
who  was  but  colossal  obstinacy,  loveless  and  athirst  for  blood. 
But  the  pre-eminence  that  comes  of  being  "  the  servant  of 
all  "  only  Jesus  has  attained,  and  it  is  a  pre-eminence  which 
has  outlasted  all  dynasties,  because  based  on  qualities  that 
have  ministered  to  all  that  was  best,  highest,  and  most 
universal  in  man.  (ii.)  Correspondent  to  this  contrast  in 
the  authorities  of  the  two  kingdoms,  is  the  difference  in  their 
ends.  The  "lord"  governs  as  a  ruler,  persons  to  him  are 
nothing,  order  and  law  are  all  in  all.  The  violated  law  must 
be  vindicated,  the  man  who  breaks  it  must  be  broken.  But 
the  "minister"  serves  as  a  saviour;  persons  to  him  are 
everything  ;  law  and  order  are  agencies  for  the  creation  of 
happy  persons  and  the  common  weal.  The  law  which 
lordship  enjoins  is  in  its  ultimate  analysis  force,  and  is, 
when  violated,  vindicated  by  the  strength  it  commands  ; 
but  the  end  or  law  which  the  ministry  obeys  is  benevolence, 
or  in  its  ultimate  analysis  love,  and  it  is  vindicated  only 
when  it  can,  by  the  creation  of  a  happy  harmony  between 
the  person  and  his  conditions,  overcome  misery  and  its 
causes.  The  creative  energy  in  this  case  is  moral,  not,  as  in 
the  other,  physical  ;  and  the  created  state  is  beatitude,  or 
personal  happiness  within  a  happy  state,  (iii.)  The  contrast 
of  authorities  and  ends  implies  therefore  a  correlative  con- 
trast of  means.  The  "lord"  prevails  by  his  power  to  inflict 
suffering,  the  "minister"  by  his  power  to  save  from  it  ;  but 
the  saving  is  a  process  of  infinite  painfulness,  while  the 
infliction  is  easy  to  him  who  has  the  adequate  strength. 
The  "lord"  has  only  so  to  marshal  his  forces  as  to  work 
his  will,  but  the  "  minister  "  has  to  seek  the  person  he  would 
save,  bear  him  in  his  own  soul,  quicken  the  dead  energies 
of  good  within  him  by  the  streams  of  his  own  life,  burn  out 
the  evil  of  the  old  manhood  by  the  fire  of  consuming  love. 
The  final  act,  therefore,  of  the  King  whose  kinghood  is  a 


408         DEATH    FREE,    NOT  COMPULSORY 

ministry,  is  the  sacrifice  of  Himself,  giving  "  His  life  as  a 
ransom  for  many." 

3.  From  this  analysis  of  the  words  of  Jesus,  several  posi- 
tions seem  to  follow,  and  these  we  may  illustrate,  not  only 
from  the  Synoptists,  but  from  John,  which  is  here  full  of 
elucidatory  material. 

(a)  There  is  a  distinct  change  in  the  point  of  view  from 
which  the  death  is  regarded.  Before  it  was  represented  as 
inflicted,  the  Son  of  man  was  to  suffer  death  at  the  hands 
of  the  "  elders  and  chief  priests  "  ;  here  He  lays  down  His 
life,  spontaneously  submits  to  death.  The  entrance  of  this 
voluntary  element  modifies  the  whole  conception,  changes 
the  death  from  a  martyrdom  to  a  sacrifice.  The  martyr  is 
not  a  willing  sufferer,  he  is  the  victim  of  superior  force.  He 
dies  because  others  so  will.  He  might  be  able  to  purchase 
a  pardon  by  recantation,  did  his  conscience  allow  him  to  re- 
cant ;  but  conscience  is  not  the  cause  of  this  death,  only  a 
condition  for  the  action  of  those  who  inflict  it.  He  does  not 
choose  death  ;  death,  as  it  were,  chooses  him.  But  sacrifice 
is  possible  only  where  there  is  perfect  freedom — where  a  man 
surrenders  what  he  has  both  the  right  and  the  power  to  with- 
hold. Now  Jesus  here  speaks  of  His  act  as  a  free  act ;  He 
came,  not  simply  to  suffer  at  the  hands  of  violent  men,  but  to 
do  a  certain  thing — "  give  his  life."  The  terms  that  describe 
the  ministry  and  the  death  are  co-ordinate,  freedom  enters  in 
the  same  measure  into  both  ;  as  He  came  to  minister  He 
came  to  give  His  life,  the  spontaneity  in  both  cases  being 
equal  and  identical. 

The  two  points  of  view — the  earlier  and  the  later — are  not 
inconsistent,  but  rather  complementary.  In  John  the  spon- 
taneity is  more  emphasized  than  in  the  Synoptists.  His  life 
no  man  takes  from  Him,  He  lays  it  down  of  Himself.1  But 
the  same  Gospel  emphasizes  more  than  any  of  the  others  the 

1  x.  18. 


ITS    MOTIVE    IS    LOVE  409 

malignant  activity  of  the  Jews  in  compassing  His  death.1 
Their  action  was  necessary  to  its  form,  but  His  Spirit  deter- 
mined its  essence.  The  significance  it  had  for  history  came 
from  the  framework  into  which  it  was  woven  ;  but  its  value  to 
God  and  man  proceeded  from  the  spontaneity  with  which  it 
was  undertaken  and  endured.  In  the  freedom,  therefore,  which 
He  now  emphasized,  Jesus  lifted  His  death  from  an  event  in 
the  history  of  Israel  to  an  event  in  the  history  of  Spirit  ; 
and  at  the  same  time  changed  it  from  a  martyrdom  into 
a  sacrifice,  i.e.  from  a  fate  which  He  suffered  to  a  work  which 
He  achieved. 

(/3)  But  beside  this  change  from  the  conception  of  His  per- 
son as  a  passive  to  that  of  it  as  an  active  factor  in  His  death, 
stands  another :  the  expression  of  the  principle  that  governs 
His  action.  The  sacrifice  is  not  unmotived  ;  it  is  in  order 
to  service,  an  act  born  of  benevolence.  John  here  supplies 
an  interpretative  verse :  "  Greater  love  hath  no  man  than 
this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends."2  And 
there  is  a  still  higher  synthesis.  What  is  done  in  obedience 
to  love  is  done  in  obedience  to  God.  And  so  the  same  act 
which  appears  as  love  to  man  appears  as  duty  to  His  Father, 
doing  His  will  or  obeying  His  commandments.3  The  volun- 
tary act  thus  turns  into  the  very  end  of  His  existence,  the 
cause  why  He  came  into  the  world.4  And  He  is  therefore 
the  person  whose  function  it  is  as  the  way  to  lead  to  the 
Father,  as  the  truth  to  show  the  Father,  as  the  life  to 
generate,  enlarge,  and  perpetuate  on  earth  the  Spirit  which 
is  of  Gocl.5  The  death  thus  ceases  to  be  an  incident  in  the 
petty  and  distressful  history  of  a  small  people.  It  assumes  a 
universal  significance,  is  taken  into  the  purpose  of  God,  and 
becomes  the  means  for  the  realization  of  the  divine  ends. 

(7)  The  ends  to  which  the  death  is  a  means  are  variously 
represented.  In  the  synoptic  passage  the  end  stands  in 

1   v.  1 8  ;  vii.  19,  30  ;  viii.  37-40  ;   x.  31-32  ;  xi.  50.  2  xv.  13. 

8  x.  18;  xiv.  31.  4  xviii.  37  ;  xix.  u.  5  xiv.  6. 


410  THE    DEATH    REDEEMS 

antithesis  to  that  of  the  ethnic  kingdoms,  i.e.  it  is  a  state 
not  of  bondage  but  of  ordered  freedom,  in  a  realm  where 
the  highest  in  honour  and  in  office  are  the  most  efficient 
in  service.  This  is  in  harmony  with  the  Johannine  word, 
"  the  truth  shall  make  you  free." l  But  the  opposite  of 
freedom  is  bondage,  and  in  each  case  the  state  is  in  nature 
correspondent  to  its  cause.  "  Where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord 
is  there  is  liberty  "  ;  but  "  whosoever  committeth  sin  is  the 
bondservant  of  sin."  2  The  sin  which  man  serves  may  be 
incorporated  in  many  forms  :  the  world,3  which  is  sin 
generalized  ;  the  devil,4  which  is  sin  personalized ;  the 
wolves  that  harass  and  devour  the  flock,5  which  is  sin 
symbolized.  These  are  but  aspects  of  one  thing :  sin  is 
each,  and  sin  is  all  ;  but  His  death  is  the  means  by  which 
God  effects  deliverance  from  each  and  all.  By  it  the  world 
is  overcome,6  the  devil  is  judged,7  and  the  sheep  are  saved.8 
Now  there  is  no  term  that  could  better  express  the  means 
that  effects  these  ends  than  \,i>Tpov,  i.e.  where  the  end  is 
redemption,  emancipation,  deliverance  from  the  dark  powers 
which  hold  man  in  bondage,  the  means  are  most  correctly 
denoted  a  "  ransom."  It  is  evident  that  Jesus  is  thinking 
of  the  fitness  and  efficacy  of  His  death  as  a  method  of 
accomplishing  a  given  purpose,  and  this  determines  the  word 
He  chooses.  He  does  not  think  of  buying  off  man  either 
from  the  world  or  the  devil,  or  of  paying  a  debt  to  God,  or 
of  making  satisfaction  to  law  ;  He  simply  thinks  of  man  as 
enslaved,  and  by  His  death  rescued  from  slavery.  To  require 
that  every  element  in  a  figurative  word  be  found  again  in  the 
reality  it  denotes,  is  not  exegesis  but  pedantry — the  same 
sort  of  pedantry  that  would  find  in  the  parable  of  the  Prodi- 
gal Son  a  complete  and  exhaustive  picture  of  the  relations  of 
God  and  man. 

1  John  viii.  32.  '  2  Cor.  iii.  17  ;  John  viii.  34. 

8  John  xv.  1 8,  19.  4  viii.  44.  5  x.  12. 

6  xvi.  33.  7  xvi.  ii  ;  xiv.  30.  8  x.  14,  15. 


SUFFERED    IN    ROOM    OF   MANY  411 

(8)  The  death  is  "  for  many."  The  "  many  "  is  to  be  taken 
as  =  multitude,  'mass.  We  cannot  think  that  "the  Son  of 
man "  and  the  "  many  "  stand  in  accidental  juxtaposition. 
The  one  term  denotes  a  person  who  stands  related  to  col- 
lective mankind  ;  the  other  term  denotes  those  to  whom  He 
is  related  as  the  "multitude,"  the  "many,"  not  as  opposed  to 
the  few,  but  as  distinguished  from  "  the  One."  The  One  has 
the  distinction  of  the  unique  :  He  stands  alone,  and  does  what 
He  alone  can  do.  Of  the  "  many "  no  one  "  can  by  any 
means  redeem  his  brother  nor  give  to  God  a  ransom  for 
him"  ; l  but  "  the  One  "  can  do  what  is  impossible  to  all  or 
any  of  the  "  many."  His  pre-eminence,  therefore,  is  the 
secret  of  His  worth  ;  He  does  what  is  possible  to  no  other, 
for  He  transcends  all  others,  and  His  personality  equals  as  it 
were  the  personality  of  collective  man.  Hence  He  is  able  to 
"give  Himself  a  ransom  for  many." 

(e)  "  For  many  :"  avri  7ro\\wv  =  "  in  room  of  many."  His 
death  is  not  a  common  death,  and  Jesus  does  not  here  con- 
ceive it  simply  as  suffered  "for  conscience'  sake,"  but  as  "for 
many."  In  it  He  endures  the  tragedy  of  His  pre-eminence. 
Though  1 1  is  grace  concedes  to  those  who  follow  Him  fellow- 
ship in  His  sufferings,  yet  in  the  article  and  moment  of 
Sacrifice  He  is  without  a  fellow.  It  is  "  a  cup  "  which  He 
alone  can  drink  ;  "a  baptism"  which  none  can  share.  And 
it  is  so  because  He  stands  where  no  one  can  stand  beside 
Him,  in  a  death  which  is  "a  ransom  for  many." 

§    II.     How  Jerusalem  helps  to  define  the  Idea 

The  ministry  in  Jerusalem  is  the  supreme  moment  in  the 
historv  of  Jesus,  and  we  have  therefore  to  inquire  whether 
it  reveals,  and,  if  so,  in  what  degree  it  defines,  His  idea  as 
to  1 1  is  death.  We  must  keep  clearly  in  view  the  positive- 
features  in  the  situation  :  He  comes  to  the  Holy  City,  the 

1  Ps.  xlix.  7. 


4i2  THE    ENTRY   INTO   JERUSALEM 

heart  of  the  religion,  the  home  of  the  temple,  the  throne  of 
the  priesthood,  the  one  place  where  sacrifices  acceptable  to 
God  could  be  offered.  And  He  comes  consciously  as  the 
Christ,  for  the  prophet  could  not  perish  out  of  Jerusalem.1 
And  so  everything  He  was  to  do  and  suffer  was  stamped 
by  Him  and  for  Himself  with  a  distinct  Messianic  character. 

I.  The  triumphal  entry  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  an 
accidental  or  even  spontaneous  outburst  of  popular  enthu- 
siasm. The  Synoptists  are  agreed  in  ascribing  the  initiative 
to  Jesus  ;  He  sends  for  the  ass  and  the  ass's  colt  in  order  that 
He  may  fitly  enter  the  Holy  City,2  and  though  John  is  less 
detailed  he  is  almost  as  explicit.3  The  disciples  read  the 
command  as  a  public  assertion  of  His  claim  to  Messianic 
dignity,  and  proceed  to  inspire  the  multitude  with  their 
belief.  And  so  Jesus  is  welcomed  as  the  King  come  to  claim 
His  own  by  a  jubilant  people,  crying,  "  Hosanna  to  the  Son 
of  David  ! "  He  does  not  rebuke  their  joy,  or,  as  He  had 
once  done,4  enjoin  silence  as  to  His  being  the  Christ,  but 
accepts  their  homage  as  His  rightful  due.  Hence  when  the 
Pharisees  said,  "  Master,  rebuke  Thy  disciples,"  He  answered 
that,  were  they  to  be  silent,  the  very  stones  would  cry  out.5 
He  thus  endorses  and  vindicates  their  recognition.  But  He 
knows  that  while  the  people  are  trustful  and  waiting  to  be 
led,  the  rulers  are  suspicious  and  watching  to  crush  the 
leader  and — to  fulfil  His  prophecy.  For  to  subtle  rulers 
nothing  is  so  easy  as  to  use  a  simple  people  as  they  will. 

But  for  His  judgment  on  these  public  events  we  must  turn 
to  words  spoken  in  the  intimacy  of  His  immediate  circle. 
On  the  morrow,  as  He  returns  to  the  city,  He  speaks  the 
parable  of  the  barren  fig  tree.6  It  has  a  double  moral,  one 
pointed  at  the  Jews,  another  at  the  disciples.  The  first  tells 

1  Luke  xiii.  33. 

2  Matt.  xii.  I  ff. ;  Mark  xi.  I  ff.  ;  Luke  xix.  29  ff. 

3  John  xii.  14.  4  Matt.  xvi.  20. 

5  Luke  xix.  40.  6  Matt.  xxi.  18-22. 


IS    THE    KING   COMING    TO    HIS    OWN      413 

how  in  the  season  of  fruition  He  came  to  Israel,  and  instead 
of  fruit  "  found 'nothing  but  leaves."  And  what  was  the  good 
of  the  fruitless  tree  save  to  be  bidden  "to  wither  away"? 
The  scribes,  who  ought  to  have  been  the  eyes  of  the  people, 
saw  not  the  time  of  their  visitation,  saw  only  that  their  own 
custody  of  the  parchment  which  held  the  oracles  of  God  was 
threatened  ;  and  so  they  made  the  great  refusal.  The  chief 
priests,  who  ought  to  have  been  the  conscience  of  Israel,  had 
no  conscience  toward  God  but  only  to  themselves  ;  and  so 
they  could  think  of  nothing  but  the  happiest  expedient  for 
effecting  His  death.  So  read,  the  parable  is  a  piece  of  severe 
prophetic  satire.  The  second  moral  told  the  disciples  to  have 
faith  ;  with  it  they  could  accomplish  anything,  without  it 
nothing  at  all.  They  were  to  be  the  antithesis  to  the  rulers, 
and  exemplify  not  a  faithlessness  which  the  world  overcomes, 
but  the  faith  which  overcomes  the  world.  The  two  combined 
show  the  twofold  attitude  of  Jesus,  on  the  one  hand  to  the 
men  who  were  to  erect  the  cross,  on  the  other  to  the  men 
who  were  to  preach  in  His  name  to  all  nations.  What  is 
significant  is  the  place  and  function  which  the  parable 
assigns  to  Himself:  to  fail  to  receive  Him  is  fundamental 
failure  ;  to  believe  in  Him  is  to  be  qualified  to  effect  the 
removal  of  mountains. 

What  immediately  followed  the  entry  must  also  be  noted. 
Jesus  went  straight  to  the  temple,  where,  Mark  significantly 
says,  "  lie  looked  round  upon  all  things,"  '  and,  returning  on 
the  morrow,  "He  cast  out  all  them  that  bought  and  sold  in 
the  temple,  and  overthrew  the  tables  of  the  money-changers, 
and  the  seats  of  them  that  sold  doves."  -  This  incident  has 
been  very  variously  judged  :  it  has  been  regarded  as  an  out- 
break of  passion,  as  a  lawless  act,  as  even  an  act  of  rebellion 
and  revolution  ;  as  a  desperate  attempt  to  precipitate  a  con- 
flict, and  by  a  sort  of  surprise  attack  save  Himself  from  deleat 

1   Mark  xi.  11.  *  xi.  15  ;   Matt.  xxi.  12,  13. 


4i4      THE  LORD  OF  THE  TEMPLE 

by  the  priests  and  rulers.1  These  seem  to  us  shallow  views. 
We  could  not  feel  as  if  Jesus  became  sinful  simply  because 
He  was  angry  ;  nay,  the  more  sinless  we  think  Him  to  be  the 
more  do  we  conceive  indignation  and  resentment  as  natural 
and  even  necessary  to  Him.  There  are  acts  and  states  that 
ought  to  provoke  anger,  and  not  to  feel  it  would  argue  a 
singularly  poor  and  obtuse  moral  nature,  without  any  power 
of  recoil  from  the  offensive  and  reprehensible.  And  from 
what  He  saw  in  the  temple  Jesus  did  well  to  be  angry 
though  it  was  anger  without  passion.  Matthew2  finely  indi- 
cates this  by  two  things,  "  the  blind  and  the  lame  " — the  two 
most  timid  classes — came  to  Him  to  be  healed  ;  and  the 
children,  who  are  ever  sensitive  to  passion  and  instinctively 
shrink  from  hate,  were  attracted  to  Him  and  sang  in  His 
praise  ;  i.e.  the  anger  which  was  terrible  to  the  guilty  seemed 
tenderness  to  the  innocent.  And  so  the  chief  priests  and 
scribes  said,  in  suspicion  and  alarm,  l~  Hearest  Thou  what 
these  say?"  But  He  justified  the  children  thus:  "  Yea,  did 
ye  never  read,  Out  of  the  mouths  of  babes  and  sucklings 
Thou  hast  perfected  praise?"  And  His  own  action,  how 
does  He  justify  it?  By  comparing  the  ideal  with  the  actual 
temple :  the  ideal  was  to  be  a  House  of  Prayer  for  all 
nations,  but  the  actual  had  been  made  a  den  of  robbers, 
i.e.  they  had  narrowed  it,  and  had  prostituted  the  pure 
house  of  God  to  their  own  sordid  uses.  And  He  claimed 
the  right  to  raise  up  the  fallen  ideal  and  to  open  the  door 
wide  to  the  pure  in  heart,  who  could  see  God,  but  could 
not  trade  in  the  holy  place. 

He  thus,  in  effect,  said  that  as  they  had  failed  to  under- 
stand prophecy,  they  had  failed  to  realize  worship.  The 
counterpart  of  the  dumb  oracle  was  the  defiled  altar.  And 

1  Keim,  Jesus  of  Nazara,  vol.  v.  pp.  118-23,  for  example,  speaks  about 
"  His  uncurbed  anger,"  "  His  passion  for  rule  and  revolution,"  and  de- 
scribes His  action  as  the  "  Nothakt  eines  Untergehenden." 

*  Matt.  xxi.  14-16. 


IS    GREATER   THAN    THE    TEMPLE         415 

so  He  affirmed  His  right  to  govern  the  house  of  God,  to 
declare  invalid  the  authority  of  the  men  who  claimed  to 
stand  in  the  Aaron ic  succession  and  to  sit  in  Moses"  seat,  to 
abolish  the  old  and  institute  a  new  order,  and  to  introduce 
the  hour  when  the  true  worshipper  was  to  "  worship  the 
Father  in  spirit  and  in  truth."  But  in  order  to  see  the 
full  meaning  of  the  act,  we  must  turn  to  a  saying  found 
elsewhere.  At  the  trial  two  false  witnesses  appear  and 
testify:  "This  man  said,  I  am  able  to  destroy  the  temple 
of  God,  and  to  build  it  in  three  days,"  l  and  the  words  were 
repeated  by  the  mockers  at  the  cross.2  The  saying,  which 
was  truly  told,  but  falsely  interpreted,  evidently  belongs 
here,  and  means  that  He  had  conceived  Himself  as  the 
spiritual  reality  of  which  the  temple  was  the  material 
counterpart.  What  it  was  in  symbol  He  was  in  truth — the 
medium  for  the  reconciliation  of  man  and  God.  In  Galilee 
His  controversy  had  been  with  the  Pharisees  touching  tradi- 
tion and  the  law,  here  it  was  with  the  priests  touching 
worship  and  the  temple  ;  but  the  same  idea  lies  behind 
both — His  transcendence  of  the  system  which  the  Jew 
regarded  as  absolute  and  final  :  the  Son  of  Man  is  greater 
than  the  temple,3  and  the  Lord  of  the  Law;1  both  are  from 
Him,  through  Him,  and  for  Him.  In  the  background  of 
His  mind,  regulating  His  speech  and  action,  is  the  thought 
of  the  ideal  temple,  which  was  profaned  in  the  profanation 
of  the  actual,  and  as  the  pure  Sacrifice  He  purged  the  place 
where  sacrifices  were  impurely  offered. 

2.  But  it  is  still  more  in  the  teaching  peculiar  to  the 
Jerusalem  period  that  His  idea  is  defined.  It  falls  into 
two  divisions,  which  we  may  call  the  exoteric  and  the 
esoteric. 

(a)  In  the  exoteric,  or  outer,  there  is  a  new  note  ;  His  wirds 
are  graver,  sterner,  much  concerned  with  His  death,  and  the 

1  Mutt.  xxvi.  61  ;  cf.  John  ii.  19. 
3  Matt.  xii.  6. 


416  THE    PARABLES    SPOKEN    IN    JERUSALEM 

part  in  it  the  rulers  were  to  play.     Ideas  and  principles  also 
appear,  different  from  any  He  had  expressed  while  He  lived 
in  Galilee,     (i.)  There  is  the  parable  of  the  husbandmen,  who 
first  beat  and  kill  and  stone  the  servants,  and  finally  slay  the 
son  that  they  may  seize  on  his  inheritance.1     What  is  this 
but  a  picture  of  the   scene  which  was   passing  before  His 
eyes  and  theirs?      (ii.)  There  is   His    interpretation    of  the 
stone   which    the    builders    rejected,  but    which   yet    became 
the  chief  stone  of  the  corner.2    The  builders  are  the  rulers; 
He   Himself  is   the   stone,  hastily  set  aside,  but  so  terrible 
that  it  breaks    whoever    falls    on   it,  and    grinds    to    powder 
the  man  on  whom  it  falls.      No  words   could    more  clearly 
forecast  their   respective   parts  in  the  immediate  future  and 
in  the  subsequent  history,     (iii.)  There  is  the  parable  of  the 
Marriage  Supper,3 — full  of  the  tragedy  of  the  moment, — the 
bidden    guests    scornfully    refusing    to    come,    the    servants 
spitefully    entreated,    even    slain,    though    the    slayers    are 
themselves    soon    to    be    slain,    and    their    city    burned    up, 
while    the    wedding    is    to    be    furnished    with    fitter    guests. 
The    meaning   is    obvious  :     He   is    the    King's    Son,  now  is 
the  festival  of  the  marriage,  and  the  rulers,  who  in  spite  of 
their   proud    claims    are  yet   only  guests  in   the    House,  are 
rejected  of  God  for  the  rejection  of  His  Son.       (iv.)  There 
is  the  attitude   of  Jerusalem  to   Him  and   His  to  her.      He 
has  a  marvellous   vision  ; 4    on  the  one   hand  the  city  is  as 
it  were   personalized,  and  stands   pictured  as  a  colossal  per- 
secutor, inheritor  of   the  guilt  of  all  past   martyrdoms,  and 
so  charged  with  all  the  righteous  blood  which  has  from  the 
days  of  Abel  been  shed  upon  the  earth  ;    and  on  the  other 
hand  He  stands  as   Maker  and   Leader  of  martyrs,  a  colossal 
Person  in  whose  veins  flows  all  the  blood  of  all  the  righteous; 
and  by  whose  will  the  new  prophets  are  fitly  to  be  sent  to 
deliver  their  testimony  and   endure  the   cross  ;    i.e.   He  con- 


ceives  the  hour  to  be  at  hand  when  acts  are  to  be  done 
which  will  epitomize  and  embody  all  the  martyrdoms  of 
all  the  holy  who  have  ever  lived.  But  He  who  sees  Himself 
and  His  thus  suffer  at  her  hands,  is  the  very  One  whose 
mission  and  passion  it  was  to  save  and  shelter  her.  (v.)  In 
the  most  authentic  and  sublime  of  the  Apocalyptic  discourses 
He  affirms  what  we  may  call  the  vicarious  principle.  The 
good  or  ill  of  His  people  is  His  ;  they  are  one  with  Him 
and  He  with  them.  The  smallest  beneficence  to  the  least 
of  His  brethren  is  done  to  Him  ;  the  good  refused  to  them 
is  denied  to  Him.1  And,  we  may  add,  this  idea  implies  its 
converse  :  if  their  sufferings  are  His,  His  are  theirs  ;  what 
He  endures  and  what  He  achieves,  man  achieves  and  en- 
dures. 

We  can  hardly  misread  the  significance  of  these  passages. 
They  bear  witness  to  this  :  that  the  moment  when  He 
foresees  His  death  most  clearly  He  conceives  His  person 
most  highly  ;  that  He  regards  this  death  as  a  calamity 
to  those  who  reject,  an  infinite  good  to  those  who  accept, 
Him  ;  that  those  who  compass  it  participate  in  what  may 
be  termed  a  universal  crime,  which  shall  work  their 
disaster  while  constituting  His  opportunity  to  effect  ever- 
lasting good.  The  principle  which  explains  these  things 
is  His  complete  identification  with  all  the  righteousness  of 
time,  or  the  unit}'  in  Him  of  the  being  of  all  the  good 
who  are  hated  of  all  the  evil. 

(/3)  But  these  are  more  or  less  external  views,  con- 
ditioned by  the  antithesis  under  which  they  are  developed; 
for  His  more  inward  mind  we  must  turn  to  His  words 
to  the  disciples.  What  this  mind  was  is  evident  from 
the  incident  in  the  house  of  Simon,  the  leper.'-'  The 
conflict  in  the  city  and  with  the  rulers  is  over;  and  lie 
can  speak  to  His  own  quietly  and  without  controversv 
concerning  the  secret  things  of  His  own  soul.  As  the\ 
1  Matt.  xxv.  35  40,  42-45.  '•*  Matt.  xxvi.  6-13  ;  Mark  xiv.  3-9. 

P.C.K.  27 


418  ANOINTED    FOR   THE   BURYING 

sit  at  meat  a  woman,  bearing  "  an  alabaster  box  of  very 
precious  ointment,"  steals  softly  up  behind  Him,  and 
"  pours  it  upon  His  head."  What  followed  shows  how 
little  the  disciples  had  learned,  and  how  much  of  their 
old  spirit  still  lived  within  them.  "  To  what  purpose  is 
this  waste  ?  "  is  their  indignant  question,  while  their 
sordid  feeling  is  disguised  as  concern  for  the  poor.  But 
the  reply  of  Jesus  expresses  His  innermost  thought : 
"She  is  come  to  anoint  My  body  aforehand  for  the 
burying."  His  death  fills  His  mind,  and  it  is  to  be  a  death 
which  will  leave  no  chance  for  assuaging  the  grief  of 
the  living  by  the  last  tender  ministries  to  the  dead.  And 
He  rejoices  to  see  His  own  acts  of  sacrifice  reflected  in 
the  gracious  act  of  the  woman  ;  the  love  that  surrenders 
life  feels  comforted  by  the  kindred  love  which  covers  with 
grateful  fragrance  the  body  so  soon  to  be  lifeless.  But 
there  is  an  even  finer  touch,  showing  the  faith  that  lived 
in  the  heart  of  disaster.  Jesus,  while  He  anticipates  death, 
anticipates  universal  fame  and  everlasting  remembrance. 
His  gospel  is  to  be  preached  "  throughout  the  whole 
world,"  and  the  woman's  act  is  to  be  everywhere  "  spoken 
of  as  a  memorial  for  her."  This  consciousness  of  His 
universal  and  enduring  import  is  a  note  of  the  sayings 
which  belong  to  His  last  days,  and  stands  indissolubly 
associated  with  His  approaching  death.  His  words  are 
to  abide  for  ever  ; 1  His  gospel  is,  like  the  temple  of  God, 
destined  for  "  all  peoples."  And  these  things  He  speaks 
of  as  simply  and  confidently  as  He  speaks  of  His  death. 

§   III.    The  Significance  of  the  Supper 

i.  But  the  most  solemn  and  significant  of  all  His 
utterances  concerning  His  death  are  the  words  spoken 
at  the  institution  of  the  Supper.  Their  sacramental  inter- 

1  Mark  xiii.  31. 


WHAT    DOES    THE    SUPPER    MEAN?        419 

pretation  lies  indeed  outside  our  present  purpose  ;  so  does 
the  interesting-  question  which  has  been  recently  raised, 
whether  we  owe  the  change  of  the  Supper  into  a  permanent 
sacrament  to  Jesus  or  to  Paul,  and  whether  the  suggestive 
cause  of  the  change  was  Jewish  custom  or  Greek  mysteries. 
This  question  requires  a  broader  and  more  searching 
treatment  than  it  has  yet  received.  The  later  action  of 
the  mysteries,  and  the  tendencies  that  created  the  mysteries, 
upon  the  ideas  of  the  Supper,  of  the  elements,  the  conditions, 
the  effects,  and  the  modes  of  observance,  may  be  established 
by  various  lines  of  proof;  but  we  see  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  the  Supper  had  become  a  Christian  custom  before 
Christianity  had  felt  the  delicate  yet  subduing  touch  of 
the  Hellenic  spirit.  This  question,  however,  does  not 
affect  ours,  which  is  simply,  "  What  did  Jesus  mean  by 
the  words  lie  used  as  to  His  own  death  at  the  institution 
of  the  Supper?  " 

In  the  several  narratives  the  formulae  are  not  quite 
identical.  As  has  been  often  remarked,  there  are  two 
main  versions — that  of  Paul1  and  Luke2  on  the  one  hand, 
and  that  of  Matthew  3  and  Mark  4  on  the  other  ;  but  even 
the  versions  which  are  alike  significantly  differ  from  each 
other,  and  as  significantly  agree  with  a  representative  of 
the  independent  tradition.  Thus  the  formula  for  the  bread 
is  simpler  in  Matthew  (Ad/Sere,  (fxiyere'  TOVTO  earn'  TO  crco/za 
fjiov),  and  Mark  (who  omits  (^ayere),  but  more  detailed  in 
Paul  (TOVTO  /JLOV  ecrnv  TO  o~w/j.a  TO  vTrep  vfjiwv'  TOVTO  TrwetTt 
etv  Tjji'  e^rjv  dvn/j,vr)aiiv),  and,  according  to  the  received  text, 
most  detailed  in  Luke  (TOVTO  tcrrtr  TO  crw^ta  /J.QV  TO  inrtp 

V/J,fiU'     OlOOfMCVOV'   TOVTO    TTOitlTG    61?     TT}V     f/J,J)V     <l  l'dfjLV)]O  41') .        The 

variations    affect    both   the  theological   and    the    sacramental 

1  i  Cor.  xi.  24-25. 

'2  xxn.  19-20.  But  as  to  the  text  here  sec  Westrott  and  Hort,  Intro- 
auction,  ^  240.  241.  and  .\t>tcs  on  Select  Readings,  pp.  63,  64.  Cl".  Zahn, 
Einleitung,  ii.  pp.  357-359.  8  xxvi.  26-  28.  4  xiv.  22-24. 


420  DIFFERENCES   OF   FORMULAE 

idea,  the  former  in  TO  vrrep  v^wv,  the  latter  in  rovro  rroielre 
et?  rrjv  e^jv  dvd/jLvijcriv.  In  the  formula  for  the  wine,  the 
cross  agreements  and  differences  are  still  more  instructive. 
Mark  is  simplest :  rovro  eanv  TO  al/jid  /j,ov  T?}?  SiaOrjKrjs  TO 
€K-^yvvo^evov  vrrep  TTO\\O)V.  Matthew  changes  iirrep  into  rrepi, 
and  adds  et?  afyeaw  a^apnwv.  Paul  says  :  rovro  TO  -rror^piov 
rj  Kcuvrj  8ia0)JKrj  ecrrlv  ev  T&>  efjiw  aifiart :  while  Luke  com- 
bines Matthew  and  Mark  with  Paul,  thus  :  rovro  TO  jrorrjpiov 
r/  /caivrj  SiadrjKr/  ev  r(f>  aipari  /u,oi>,  TO  inrep  vp,£)v  erc^vvvo/jLevov. 
These  variations  are  easily  explicable,  and  show,  so  far 
as  the  sacramental  idea  is  concerned,  that  the  validity  of 
the  ordinance  did  not  depend  on  any  uniformity  in  the 
formula  used  ;  for  words  so  freely  altered  could  not  be 
conceived  to  possess  some  mystic  or  magic  potency  capable 
of  effecting  a  miraculous  change  in  the  elements.  As 
concerns  the  theological  idea,  the  difference  in  the  terms 
represents  no  contradiction  or  radical  divergence  in  the 
thought.  Paul  and  Luke  say,  "  the  new  covenant  in  My 
blood " — i.e.  the  covenant  which  stood  in  the  blood,  or 
had  therein  the  condition  of  its  being.  Matthew  and  Mark 
say,  "  this  is  the  blood  of  the  covenant " — i.e.  the  blood 
which  gives  it  being  and  character,  which  is  its  seal  and 
sanction.  They  agree  in  their  idea  of  the  covenant,  though 
Paul  and  Luke  think  of  it  as  "the  new"  in  contrast  to 
"  the  old,"  while  Matthew  and  Mark  think  of  it,  absolutely, 
as  sole  and  complete.  Paul  says  nothing  as  to  the  persons 
for  whom  the  blood  has  been  shed  ;  Luke  says,  "  for  you  "  ; 
Matthew  and  Mark,  "  for  many."  But  the  difference  here  is 
formal.  Paul  means  what  the  others  say,  while  the  "  you  " 
is  only  the  personalized  and  present  "many,"  the  "many" 
the  enlarged  and  collective  "you."  Matthew  alone  definitely 
expresses  the  purpose  for  which  the  blood  was  shed — 
"  unto  the  remission  of  sins  "  ;  but  this  only  made  explicit 
the  idea  contained  in  the  vrcep  v^wv  and  the  vrrkp  or  even 
the  rrepl  TTO\\WV  :  for  what  other  idea  could  the  conscious- 


SAMENESS    OF    MEANING  421 

ness  of  the  disciples  supply  save  that  the  blood  shed  "  for 
them,"  or  "  in  reference  to  many,"  was  shed  "  in  order  to 
remission  of  sins "  ?  The  phrasing  varies  ;  the  language 
is  here  less,  there  more,  explicit,  but  the  thought  is  through- 
out one  and  the  same. 

2.  What,  then,  did  the  words  which  our  authorities 
thus  render  mean  on  the  lips  of  Jesus  ?  We  cannot  be 
wrong,  considering  where  it  stands,  in  regarding  this  as 
the  weightiest,  most  precise,  and  defining  expression  which 
He  has  yet  used  concerning  His  death.  The  form  under 
which  He  first  conceived  it  was  as  an  integral  part  of  His 
work  as  Messiah,  yet  as  a  fate  He  endures  or  suffers  at 
the  hands  of  the  elders  and  chief  priests.  The  next  form 
under  which  He  conceived  it  was  as  the  spontaneous  surrender 
of  Himself  "as  a  ransom  for  many."  But  here  these  two 
forms  coalesce  in  a  third,  which  is  at  once  their  synthesis 
and  completion.  His  death  has  (a)  at  once  an  historical 
and  an  ideal,  a  retrospective  and  a  prospective  significance  ; 
it  ends  one  covenant  and  establishes  another  ;  (/3)  it  has 
an  absolute  worth  irrespective  of  the  form  it  may  assume 
or  the  means  by  which  it  may  be  effected,  for  though 
inflicted  by  men,  it  is  endured  on  behalf  of  man  ;  and  (7) 
its  express  purpose  is  to  create  a  new,  an  emancipated 
people  of  God. 

(a)  But  in  order  that  these  ideas  may  be  understood 
they  must  be  interpreted  through  His  experience,  the 
facts  and  factors  that  had  shaped  and  were  shaping  His 
thought.  The  covenant  which  He  established  stands  as 
"the  new"  in  explicit  antithesis  to  the  "old,"  and  finds 
its  constitutive  condition  and  characteristic  in  "His  blood." 
lie  dies  at  the  hands  of  the  old  covenant,  but  in  so  dving 
Me  creates  the  new.  This  makes  His  death  the  concrete 
expression  of  the  antithesis  of  the  covenants,  and  at  the 
same  time  represents  the  inmost  fact  of  His  own  conscious 
experience.  While  possessed  by  the  feeling  of  radical 


422  THE   JUDGE   JUDGES    HIMSELF 

unity  with  His  people,  He  was  an  alien  to  the  actual 
system  under  which  they  lived.  He  consciously  incor- 
porated their  most  distinctive  religious  ideas,  but  He  was 
as  consciously  in  conflict  with  the  men  who  claimed  to 
be  the  official  representatives  and  only  authorized  ministers 
of  the  old  religion.  The  degree  in  which  He  embodied 
those  ideas  was  the  measure  of  His  antagonism  to  the 
men,  and  theirs  to  Him.  To  be  the  Christ  of  prophecy 
was  to  be  the  Crucified  of  Judaism.  This  was  the  tragedy 
of  the  situation  :  the  Jew  had  existed  in  order  that  he  might 
produce  the  Christ,  but  once  He  was  there  the  Jew  did  not 
know  Him,  would  not  love  Him,  had  no  room  for  Him, 
could  do  nothing  with  Him  save  compass  His  death.  The 
words  of  Caiaphas *  are  but  the  official  version  of  what 
Jesus  Himself  had  foreseen  and  so  often  foretold.  His 
reading  of  the  religion  was  the  direct  contradiction  of 
theirs  ;  both  could  not  live  together,  and  the  only  way  in 
which  they  could  effectually  contradict  His  contradiction 
was  by  His  death.  But  at  this  point,  as  to  what  was  to 
be  accomplished  by  His  death,  He  and  they  radically 
differed  ;  they  thought  that  by  the  cross  He  was  to  die 
and  they  were  to  live,  but  He  believed  that  they  were 
through  His  death  not  to  live,  but  to  die.  This  idea  fills 
His  later  teaching ;  it  is  the  moral,  not  simply  of  the 
Apocalyptic  discourses,  but  of  the  parables  already  noticed,2 
of  His  words  to  the  women  of  Jerusalem,3  and  of  His 
lamentation  over  the  city.4  It  was  the  supreme  Nemesis 
of  history.  What  fate  save  death  could  happen  to  the 
system  whose  reward  to  its  most  righteous  Son  was  the 
cross  ? 

(/3)  But  this  is  an  indirect,  and,  as  it  were,  negative  result 
of  His  death  ;  the  direct  and  positive  is  the  new  covenant 
which  is  established  in  His  blood.  We  need  not  concern 

1  John  xi.  50.  2  Ante,  pp.  418-419.  3  Luke  xxiii.  28-31. 

*  Matt,  xxiii.  38  ;   Luke  xix.  43,  44. 


JESUS    EATS    THE    PASSOVER  423 

ourselves  with  the  idea  of  "  covenant "  ;  enough  to  say,  it  is 
here  held  to  denote  a  gracious  relation  on  God's  part  ex- 
pressed in  a  new  revelation  for  the  faith  and  obedience  of 
man.  But  what  does  very  specially  concern  us  is  what  Jesus 
says  as  to  His  blood.  It  must  be  explained  through  the 
moment  and  all  its  circumstances.  He  had  strongly  desired 
to  eat  the  Passover  with  His  disciples  before  He  suffered,1 
and  He  had  sent  Peter  and  John  beforehand  to  prepare  it.2 
Now  this  means  that  its  associations  were  vivid  both  in  His 
mind  and  in  theirs,  and  through  these  associations  His  words 
must  be  construed.  The  feast  was  the  most  domestic  of  all 
the  feasts  in  Israel  ;  in  it  the  father  was  the  priest,  the  home 
was  the  temple.  The  lamb  was  not  the  symbol  of  any  sacer- 
dotal function,  but  of  family  and  racial  unity,  especially  in 
the  eye  and  purpose  of  God.  Its  blood  was  not  shed  to 
propitiate  a  vengeful  Deity,  and  induce  Him  to  pass  kindly 
over  the  family  for  whom  it  had  been  slain  and  the  house 
where  it  was  being  eaten,  but  rather  to  mark  them  as  God's 
own  ;  in  other  words,  the  paschal  sacrifice  did  not  make  Him 
gracious,  but  found  Him  gracious,  and  confessed  that  those 
who  offered  it  believed  themselves  to  be  the  heirs  of  II  is 
grace.  It  was  the  seal  of  a  mercy  which  had  been  shown 
and  was  now  claimed,  not  the  purchase  of  a  mercy  which 
was  withheld  and  must  be  bought.  It  signified,  too,  that 
since  the  people  were  God's,  they  could  not  continue  slaves, 
but  must  be  emancipated  and  live  as  became  the  free, 
obedient  to  the  Sovereign  whose  supremacy  could  brook  no 
rival  authority.  It  was  the  symbol,  therefore,  of  unit}-,  all 
the  families  who  sacrificed  constituted  a  single  people;  Israel 
knew  only  one  God,  God  knew  only  one  Israel.  Jesus  trans- 
lated these  associations  from  the  traditions  which  acted  as 
the  fetters  of  the  past  into  the  ideals  which  were  to  govern 
the  future.  He  manifestly  conceived  Himself  as  the  sacri- 
ficial lamb,  for  only  so  can  we  find  any  meaning  in  the 
1  Luke  xxii.  15.  2  Luke  xxii.  8. 


424    UNITY   OF   THE    ONE   AND   THE    MANY 

reference  to  His  blood  ;  and  the  figure  was  beautiful  enough 
to  apply  even  to  Him.  It  was  the  symbol  of  innocence, 
meekness,  gentleness,  of  one  who  was  led  to  the  slaughter, 
and  was  dumb  under  the  hand  of  the  shearer ;  but  it  did 
not  speak  of  a  victim  whose  blood  was  shed  to  appease  a 
vindictive  sovereign.  On  the  contrary,  the  blood  told  of 
divine  grace  and  denoted  a  member  of  the  family  of  God,  a 
man  spared,  emancipated,  introduced  into  all  the  liberties 
and  endowed  with  all  the  privileges  of  Divine  sonship. 

(7)  So  far  we  have  been  concerned  with  the  relation  of 
the  blood  to  the  covenant,  but  we  are  now  met  by  another 
question :  In  what  sense  could  it  be  said  to  be  shed  "  for 
you  "  or  "  for  many  "  ?  We  have  seen  that  He  spoke  of  acts 
done  to  the  least  and  the  neediest  of  men  as  if  they  were 
done  to  Himself;  but  the  precise  parallel  of  this  is  that  the 
acts  He  does  may  be  conceived  as  done  by  man  ;  in  other 
words,  He  is  so  the  centre  or  keystone  of  family  or  racial 
unity  that  in  a  perfectly  real  sense  His  act  is  universal,  even 
while  a  person  performs  it.  His  position  is  twofold  :  He 
conceives  Himself  as  the  Lamb  sacrificed  in  order  to  mark 
and  seal  the  people  of  God,  i.e.  establish  His  covenant ;  but 
He  also  at  the  same  moment  sits  in  the  seat  of  the  host  or 
father,  who  sums  up  in  himself  the  household,  acts  and 
speaks  as  their  sole  and  responsible  head.  As  the  one  He 
distributes  the  elements  which  symbolize  the  sacrifice  ;  as  the 
other  He  is  the  sacrifice  which  the  elements  symbolize.  The 
ideas  proper  to  these  quite  distinct  relations,  blend  both  in 
His  consciousness  and  in  that  of  the  disciples.  According 
to  the  one  He  is  offered  for  the  many ;  according  to  the 
other  His  act  is  their  act,  in  Him  they  live  impersonated. 
Hence  His  suffering  at  the  hands  of  man  is  theirs,  and  theirs 
also  is  His  surrender  to  the  will  of  God.  The  outer  letter 
which  is  abolished  by  His  death,  ceases  to  have  dominion 
over  them  ;  the  inner  obedience  which  is  accomplished  by 
His  spirit,  becomes  a  fact  of  their  history,  and  a  factor  of  their 


DEATH   AS    IDEA    AND   AS    EXPERIENCE    425 

ne\v  experience.  In  other  words,  by  being  made  a  curse  for 
us  He  redeems  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law  ;  and  by  means 
of  the  new  spirit  of  life  which  is  in  Him,  He  sets  us  free  from 
the  law  of  sin  and  death.  And  so  Paul  sums  up  the  inner- 
most meaning  of  His  words  when  he  said  :  "Christ  is  the  end 
of  the  law  for  righteousness  to  every  one  who  believeth."  l 

§  IV.     Gethsemane  and  the  Cross 

I.  So  far  we  have  been  occupied  with  Jesus'  prophetic 
interpretation  of  His  death,  but  when  He  comes  face  to  face 
with  it  and  sits  in  its  shadow,  we  have  to  note  a  correspondent 
and  characteristic  change  in  His  mental  attitude.  From  the 
idea  of  death  He  never  shrinks  ;  He  contemplates  it  calmly, 
speaks  of  it  with  the  serene  dignity  of  one  who  knew  that 
the  most  tragic  moment  of  His  life  was  at  once  His  own 
supreme  choice  and  the  real  end  of  His  being.  But  when  He 
knows  its  mode  and  thinks  of  the  agents  it  needed,  His  feel- 
ing changes,  and  His  speech  is  charged  now  with  admonition 
and  judgment,  now  with  pity  and  regret.  This  difference  is 
recognized  both  by  the  Synoptists  and  by  John.  By  the 
Synoptists  He  is  shown  as  speaking  of  the  positive  fact  and 
function  of  His  death  only  when  His  mood  is  most  exalted, 
or  when  He  is  most  moved  by  love  and  pity,  or  when  He 
feels  least  scorched  by  human  hate  and  most  moved  by  the 
clinging  trust  of  His  disciples.  But  when  lie  confronts  the 
men  and  sees  the  means  by  which  it  is  to  be  accomplished, 
His  spirit  vibrates  to  another  tone  ;  the  men  are  the  wicked 
husbandmen,  or  the  foolish  builders  ;  they  are  "  blind  guides," 
"hypocrites,"  who  crucify  the  living  prophets,  and  build  the 
sepulchres  of  those  long  dead.  The  city  they  rule  so  moves 
His  compassion  that  at  the  sight  of  it  lie  weeps.  The 
traitor  is  a  man  of  so  woeful  a  fate  that  he  had  better  never 
have  been  born.  And  so  while  of  death  in  relation  to 

1   Rom.  x.  4. 


426        JOY    IN    THE    DEATH    BEFORE    HIM 

Himself  He  thinks  and  speaks  with  benignant  grace,  the 
thought  of  its  manner  begets  in  Him  something  akin  to 
dismay. 

In  John  the  difference  is  even  more  strongly  accentuated. 
He  speaks  of  His  death  in  language  that  would  on  other 
lips  suggest  rapture.  It  was  His  own  act,  the  thing  He  had 
come  by  command  of  the  Father  expressly  to  do.1  It  was 
the  hour  in  which  "  the  Son  of  Man  should  be  glorified." 2 
By  death  He  was  "  to  be  lifted  up  from  the  earth,"  and 
would  "draw  all  men  unto  Himself."3  But  the  sanctity  of 
the  death  does  not  sanctify  the  instruments  by  which  it  is 
realized.  On  the  contrary  the  traitor  acts  by  inspiration  of 
Satan.4  The  Jews  are  like  their  father  the  devil,  who  was  "  a 
murderer  from  the  beginning," 5  and  this  was  said  because 
He  knew  that  they  "sought  to  kill  Him."6 

We  have,  then,  even  in  the  prophetic  period  these  two 
very  different,  but  not  at  all  incompatible,  elements  in  the 
consciousness  of  Jesus.  His  sacred  joy  or  spiritual  exalta- 
tion in  the  prospect  of  death,  and  His  horror  at  the  form 
in  which,  and  the  forces  through  which,  it  was  to  come  to 
Him.  But  now  we  must  advance  a  step  further,  and  study 
His  spirit  as  it  suffers  in  the  hands  of  those  forces  whose 
action  He  had  foreseen.  And  here  we  shall  have  constant 
need  to  remember  the  distinction  between  experience  and 
foresight ;  for  the  evil  the  intellect  watches  is  sweet  when 
compared  with  the  infinite  bitterness  of  the  evil  which  the 
soul  touches  and  feels.  What  we  have  then  to  attempt  to 
describe  is  the  transition  of  the  Saviour's  mind  from  the 
objective  contemplation  of  the  death  He  was  to  die  to  His 
subjective  experience  of  the  powers  by  which  it  was  to  be 
accomplished. 

2.  The  incident  which  exhibits  this  transition  is  the  scene 
in  Gethsemane.  Now,  of  all  the  events  in  the  Saviour's  life 

1  x.  18.  *  xii.  23-27.  a  xvii.  i,  33. 

*  xiii.  27.  5  viii.  44.  '  vii.  I . 


AGONY  IN  THE  FACE  OF  DEATH    427 

this  seems  to  me  to  demand  the  most  reverent  handling ; 
for  it  is,  as  it  'were,  the  very  Holy  of  Holies,  the  inmost 
sanctuary  of  His  sorrow,  which  ought  to  be  entered  only  at 
those  moments  when  thought  has  been  purged  from  the 
pride  and  impurities  of  life.  But  the  scholar  is  often  more 
curious  than  reverent,  though  in  sacred  things  the  irreverent 
is  near  of  kin  to  the  blind  ;  and  as  it  is  so  easy  to  be  unfit 
to  be  an  interpreter,  few  incidents  have  been  more  utterly 
misunderstood  than  this.  It  is  not  surprising  that  Celsus 
should  have  explained  the  scene  as  due  to  Christ's  fear  of 
death  j1  or  that  Julian  should  have  pitied  Him  as  a  miserable 
mortal  unable  to  bear  His  fate  calmly;2  or  that  a  modern 
pagan  like  Vanini  on  his  way  to  the  scaffold  should  have 
pointed  to  a  crucifix,  and  said  :  "  Illi  in  extremis  prae  timore 
imbellis  suclor :  ego  imperterritus  morior."3  Nor  are  we 
surprised  that  the  older  Rationalists  should  regard  it  as  the 
effect  of  a  purely  physical  cause — fear  due  to  bodily  exhaus- 
tion and  indisposition;4  or  that  Baur  should  see  in  it  only 
an  event  that  enabled  him  to  play  the  Synoptists  off  against 
John  and  John  against  the  Synoptists  ;5  or  that  Strauss,  hold- 
ing the  narrative  to  be  more  poetical  than  historical,  should 
have  mythically  decomposed  it  in  his  first  Life,'5  and  followed 
in  his  second  Baur's  antithetical  criticism  to  its  issue  in  a 
prosaic  naturalism;7  or  that  Renan,  true  to  his  Parisian 
sentimentality,  should  conceive  it  as  a  moment  when  human 
nature  reawoke  in  Jesus,  and  He  felt  enfeebled,  if  not 
affrighted,  at  the  vision  before  Him  of  the  death  which  was 

1  Contra  Ce/s.,  lib.  ii.,  c.  xxiv. 

1  Apud  Theoci.  Mops.,  in  EV.  Lucce  Com.  Frag.  ,'  Pat.  Gr.,  t.  Ixvi. 
p.  724. 

M  (inunmondus,  ///>/.  Gall.  ab.  <?.r.  Hen.  7f.,  lib.  iii.  pp.  21 1  seqq.  ; 
:f.  B  nicker,  Uistoria  F!iil<>s.,  t.  iv.,  p;irs  11,  pp.  675  8. 

*  Paulus.  /),!.<;  Li'l't'n  fesit,  ii.  pp.  202-210. 

5    L'ntersucli.  fiber  die  Kanon.  Jtvang.,  pp.  198  fif.,  207,  265  f. 

8  Life  ,'J  Jesus  (4th  ed.),  •$•$  125,  126. 

7  New  Life,  §  87. 


428  PERPLEXES    THE    REASON 

to  end  all,  and  the  vision  behind  of  the  clear  springs  of 
Galilee  and  the  fair  maidens  who  visited  them.1  But  we  are 
surprised  that  Keim  should  see  in  it  the  human  dread  of 
death  holding  Christ  back  from  His  destiny ; 2  that  Schleier- 
macher  should  lose  all  sense  of  its  sublime  significance  in  a 
hypercritical  analysis  of  the  possible  sources  of  its  details  ; 3 
or  that  Neander  should  see  Him  here  asking,  as  a  man,  to  be 
spared  the  sufferings  that  awaited  Him.4  But  bad  as  these 
explanations  are,  some  of  those  we  owe  to  more  orthodox 
theologians  are  worse.  Steinmeyer  thinks  that  Jesus  here 
may  have  taken  upon  His  shoulders  the  sin  of  the  world  in 
order  that  He  might,  vicariously,  make  atonement  for  it  on 
the  Cross.5  Long  before  him  Calvin  had  here  seen  Jesus 
as  our  substitute,  burdened  with  our  sins,  bearing  the  wrath 
of  God  with  the  judgment-seat  before  His  eyes.6  More 
reasonable  was  Ambrose,  who  saw  Jesus  sorrowful  not  for 
His  own,  but  for  man's  state :  "  Tristis  erat,  non  pro  sua 
passione,  sed  pro  nostra  dispersione."  7  But  possibly  even 
more  reasonable  was  the  elder  Dumas  when  he  represented 
the  agony  as  a  second  temptation,  in  which  the  devil  tried  to 
drive  Christ  back  from  His  work  by  three  successive  visions, 
the  last  and  most  terrible  being  the  persecution  by  the 
Church  of  the  heretics,  their  heresy  being  often  their  higher 
saintliness.  These  selections  from  a  multitude  of  elaborately 
argued  opinions,  are  enough  to  show  how  hard  it  has  been 
to  seize  the  real  significance  of  this  awful  moment  in  the 
history  of  our  Saviour's  Passion. 

3.    If  we    are   to   interpret    the    agony,    we    must    assume 
the  reality  and   the  authenticity  of  the  Synoptic  narrative.8 

1   Vie  de  Jhns,  p.  378  (jth  ed.).  8  Jesus  of  Nazara,  vi.  p.  12. 

3  l>as  Lcben  /esu,  pp.  422-4.     Cf.  Essay  on  the  Gospel  of  St.  Luke, 
pp.  300-1. 

4  Life  of  Christ,  §  280.  5  Leidensgesch,  des  Herrn,  pp.  62  ff. 
6  In  Hann.  Eixing.  Matt.  xxvi.  37. 

~  Expos.  EV.  sec.  Lucam,  lib.  x.  §  61. 

8  Matt.  xxvi.  36-46  ;   Mark  xiv.  32-42  ;  Luke  xxii.  39,  40. 


YET    IS    LUCID   TO   THE    SOUL  429 

Though  John  does  not  give  it,  yet  the  attitude  and  state  of 
mind  it  expressed  were  not  unknown  to  him.1  Luke  differs 
in  certain  details  from  Matthew  and  Mark — the  angel  which 
strengthens  Him,  the  sweat  "  as  it  were  great  drops  of  blood 
falling  down  to  the  ground,"  and  the  omission  of  the  thrice- 
repeated  prayer;  but  the  differences  are  mainly  noticeable  for 
this — Luke,  by  the  angel  and  the  sweat  of  blood,  and  Matthew 
and  Mark,  by  the  threefold  resort  to  prayer,  express  the  same 
thing — -the  intensity  of  the  strain,  the  deadly  nature  of  the 
struggle.  Now,  it  is  evident  that  the  Evangelists  did  not 
regard  the  narrative  as  representing  anything  so  common- 
place and  even  vulgar  as  the  fear  of  death.  They  had  told, 
with  many  a  touch  of  unconscious  truth,  how  the  disciples 
had  refused  to  see  the  approach  of  its  inexorable  front  while 
He  had  looked  upon  it  with  serene  and  open  face  ;  and, 
simple  as  they  were,  they  could  not  have  mistaken  the 
meaning  of  so  sudden  a  reversal  of  mental  attitude.  Not 
that  horror  at  death  in  Jesus  would  have  been  either  an 
unseemly  or  an  inexplicable  thing.  Contempt  of  life  is  the 
obverse,  indifference  to  death  is  the  reverse  of  the  same  mind. 
The  more  excellent  the  good  of  life  seems,  the  more  terrible 
will  appear  its  negation;  and  it  might  well  have  been  that  the 
soul  which  most  possessed  the  good,  should  have  most  loved 
life,  and  most  have  feared  its  darksome  ending.  But  the 
feeling,  though  explicable  in  itself,  will  not  fit  into  the  history. 
The  death  so  often  anticipated,  so  solemnly  sanctioned,  so 
formally  blessed,  could  not  be  thus  met.  The  higher  we 
place  its  significance  for  Jesus,  the  less  can  we  construe  it  as 
the  cause  of  His  agony  ;  for  this  agony  must  stand  in  organic 
connexion  with  His  expressed  mind,  not  in  violent  contra- 
diction to  it.  If  so,  then  it  is  evident  that  the  antecedent  of 
the  agony  was  not  the  idea  of  death,  but  the  feeling  as  to  its 
means  and  agents.  His  death  was  to  be  for  sin,  but  at  the 
hands  of  sinners,  yet  of  sinners  disguised  as  "elders  and 

1  John  xii.  27. 


430 

chief  priests,"  as  disciples  and  judges.  In  foresight  the  mode 
of  death  was  subordinate  to  the  idea,  but  in  experience  the 
idea  tended  to  be  lost  in  the  emotions  which  the  mode 
awakened.  How  this  was  the  history  tells.  In  Galilee  the 
men  who  were  to  effect  His  death  were  mere  names  to  Him  ; 
in  Jerusalem  the  names  became  men.  They  were  the  priests, 
who  stood  for  all  that  the  worship  of  God  signified  ;  the 
elders,  who  were  in  symbol  the  people  of  God  ;  the  magi- 
strates, who  guarded  freedom,  enforced  law,  and  typified 
right ;  the  disciples,  who  had  heard  and  followed  Him,  and 

Lived  in  His  mild  and  magnificent  eye. 

Behind  the  actual  persons  He  thus  saw  ideal  figures  stand  ; 
and  if  the  ideal  signified  what  ought  to  have  been,  it  was  the 

o  <^> 

actual  which,  by  its  inevitable  working,  determined  His  all 
too  bitter  experience.  To  see  it  stand  in  the  holy  place  was 
bad  enough,  it  was  worse  to  feel  that  it  stood  there  to  oppose 
all  that  was  of  God  in  Himself.  And  worst  of  all  was  the 
discovery  that  evil  had  found  a  foothold  and  embodiment  in 
the  society  He  Himself  had  selected  and  trained.  We  must 
not  overlook  the  influence  which  the  conduct  of  Judas  would 
exercise  on  the  mind  of  the  Master.  Jesus  as  He  entered 
the  garden  carried  a  double  memory  :  the  gracious  dream  of 
the  Supper,  and  the  lurid  image  of  the  traitor.  From  the  very 
nature  of  the  case,  the  more  bitter  would  for  the  moment  be 
the  more  potent  feeling  ;  for  where  the  soul  is  so  susceptible 
and  tense,  the  painful  strikes  more  deeply  than  the  agreeable. 
And  Gethsemane  represents  the  struggle  of  Jesus  with  the 
new  problem  which  thus  came  before  His  imagination  per- 
sonified in  Judas  and  the  priests,  and  which  he  had  to  solve 
in  the  very  face,  if  not  in  the  very  article,  of  death. 

4.  And  what  was  this  new  problem  ?  Jesus  was  holy,  and 
felt  as  only  the  sinless  can  the  stain  of  sin  burn  like  a  living 
fire  upon  His  soul.  He  had  conceived  Himself  as  a  Redeemer 
by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself,  as  a  Saviour  by  death.  But  now, 


EVIL    IX    THE    HEART    OF    GOOD  431 

when  Pie  comes  face  to  face  with  this  death,  what  does  He 
find  ?  That  sin'  has  taken  occasion  from  His  very  grace  to 
become  more  exceedingly  sinful,  to  mix  itself  up  with  II is 
sacrifice,  penetrating  and  effacing  it,  transmuting  it  from  a 
free  and  gracious  act  into  a  violent  and  necessitated  death. 
His  act  of  redemption  becomes,  so  to  say,  the  opportunity  for 
sin  to  increase.  The  thing  He  most  hates  seems  to  become 
a  partner  with  Him  in  the  work  He  most  loves,  contributing 
to  its  climax  and  consummation.  Or  if  not  so  conceived, 
it  must  be  conceived  under  a  still  more  dreadful  form,  as 
forcing  itself  into  His  way,  taking  possession  of  His  work, 
turning  it  into  "a  stone  of  stumbling  and  a  rock  of  offence," 
a  means  of  creating  sinners  while  it  had  been  intended  to 
save  from  sin.  And  there  u~as  an  even  more  intolerable 
element  in  the  situation  :  the  men  who  were  combining  to 
effect  this  death  were  persons  He  was  dying  to  save,  and 
by  their  action  they  were  making  the  saving  a  matter  more 
infinitely  hard,  more  vastly  improbable,  and  changing  the 
efficient  cause  of  salvation  into  a  sufficient  reason  for  judg- 
ment. 

Is  it  possible  to  exaggerate  the  suffering  which  such  a 
problem  at  such  a  moment  must  have  caused?  He  could 
not  turn  back  without  being  defeated  by  His  horror  of  this 
transcendent  evil,  and  He  could  not  go  forward  without 
feeling  that  lie  was  almost  compelling  it  to  be.  And  so 
first  seclusion,  then  solitude,  become  to  Him  a  necessity. 
The  society  that  had  made  the  Supper  sacred  lie  must 
forsake,  for  at  it  He  had  something  to  give  which  made 
Him  happy,  while  it  consoled  and  satisfied  the  disciples; 
no:v  lie  wanted  to  receive  and  could  not,  for  they  did  not 
understand  what  to  give  and  why  He  suffered.  So  he 
leaves  them  that  he  may  pray  alone,  yet  pauses,  and  turns 
to  take  Peter,  James,  and  John,  the  three  who  seemed  to 
know  Him  best  and  love  Him  most.  Hut  they  are  as 
irresponsive  as  the  dumb  soul  which  speaks  no  word  the 


432       THE    CONFLICT   AND   THE    PASSION 

human  ear  can  hear,  because  it  has  no  ear  which  the  human 
tongue  can  reach.  So  He  turns  to  God  in  what  we  may 
almost  describe  as  His  despair.  Thrice  He  prays  in  an 
agony  of  spirit  which  becomes  an  agony  of  body  ;  but  even 
in  the  midst  of  the  anguish  that  will  not  be  controlled,  He 
remains  master  of  His  will,  compels  it,  even  while  all  His 
nature  seems  to  resist,  to  be  not  submissive  but  obedient, 
to  accept  not  its  own  impulse,  but  God's  wisdom  as  its  law. 
The  thing  He  would  not  do,  is  what  His  own  nature  abhors  ; 
but  the  thing  He  will  do  because  He  must,  is  what  God 
requires.  He  feels  the  position  as  it  lives  in  the  place  and 
the  moment,  but  God  sees  the  universal  and  the  eternal 
issues  within  it  ;  and  so  in  spite  of  the  noble  and  justified 
resistance  of  the  flesh,  the  spirit  obeys  the  wisdom  that 
cannot  err.  The  conflict  is  over,  and  He  goes  to  a  death 
which  is  at  one  and  the  same  moment  the  world's  redemption 
and  the  world's  crime. 

I  feel  the  temerity  and  presumption  in  so  thinking,  and 
still  more  in  thus  writing,  for  I  feel  as  if  the  intellect,  in 
analytically  handling  the  Passion,  tends  to  become  little 
else  than  profane.  I  may  say,  however,  that  the  very  last 
thing  I  could  bring  myself  to  do  is  to  apply  legal  fictions 
or  judicial  processes  to  the  mind  and  state  of  the  Saviour 
in  Gethsemane.  Everything  here  seems  to  me  superlatively 
real,  in  the  last  and  highest  degree  actual.  And  the  reality 
in  this  stage  of  the  Passion  concerns  His  relation  not  to  the 
Father,  but  to  destiny  and  death.  From  death  as  such  He 
does  not  shrink,  but  from  its  mode  and  agencies,  from  death 
under  the  form  and  conditions  which  involve  its  authors  in 
what  appears  inexpiable  guilt,  His  whole  nature  recoils. 
And  this  recoil  compels  us  to  see  that  we  must  divide 
asunder  His  part  and  man's  ;  in  what  He  contributes  there 
is  saving  efficacy,  in  what  man  contributes  there  is  a  guilt 
vvhich  causes  shame,  and  becomes  a  reproach  to  all  mankind. 
And  here  one  may  find  some  small  part  of  the  reason  why 


THE    CROSS    AND    SENSE    OF    SIN         433 

His  prayer  for  release  could  not  be  granted.  The  cross  has 
in  a  perfectly  real  sense  done  more  than  any  other  agency 
to  convince  the  world  of  sin  ;  one  may  say  it  has  created 
in  man,  both  as  person  and  as  race,  the  conscience  for  sin. 
It  stands  not  simply  as  the  symbol  of  the  grace  that  saves, 
but  of  the  wickedness  that  dared  attempt  to  extinguish  the 
grace.  And  another  thing  may  be  added.  While  He  had 
to  drink  the  cup,  it  would  not  be  quite  correct  to  say  that 
His  prayer  was  not  answered.  For  He  did  not  pray  in  vain. 
The  author  of  Hebrews  says,  "  He  was  heard  for  His  godly 
fear."  '  Jesus  died  on  the  cross,  but  not  of  the  cross.  He 
suffered  crucifixion,  but  He  was  not  crucified.  The  will  which 
triumphed  in  the  conflict  broke  the  heart  which  could  not 
bear  to  endure  death  at  the  hands  of  sinners.  And  this 
brings  us  to  the  conclusion  that  the  death  which  redeems 
was  all  the  work  of  the  Redeemer ;  and  not  at  all  of  the  men 
who  might  sin  against  His  grace  but  could  not  sin  away  His 
mercy,  or  deprive  Him  of  the  splendid  privilege  of  giving 
Himself  "a  ransom  for  many." 

1  v.  9. 


P.C.R.  2<S 


Mors  ad  hominem  pertinebat,  resurrectio  ad  Filium  hominis. — 

AUGUSTINE. 

Incarnatio  Verbi  est  coinplementum  et  quies  creationis  ;  nam  in  illo 
opere  quiescit  potentia  in  se  ipsa.  Deus  uti  in  maximo  atque  ultimo 
complemento  operum  in  Christo  quiescit. — NICHOLAS  OF  CUSA. 

Die  leibliche  Geburt  Christi  bedeutet  allenthalben  seine  geistliche 
Geburt,  vvie  er  in  uns  und  wir  in  ihm  geboren  werden. — LUTHER. 

Nous  disons  que  Dieu  craint,  que  Dieu  se  courrouce,  que  Dieu  aime, 

Immortalia  mortal!  serraone  notantes  : 

ce  sont  toutes  agitations  et  esmotions  qui  ne  peuvent  loger  en  Dieu,  selon 
nostre  forme  ;  ny  nous,  1'imaginer  selon  la  sienne.  C'est  a  Dieu  seul  de 
se  cognoistre,  et  interpreter  ses  ouvrages  ;  et  le  faict  en  nostre  langue 
improprement,  pour  s'avaller  et  descendre  a  nous,  qui  sommes  a  terre 
couchez. — MONTAIGNE. 

Here  was,  therefore,  an  exemplary  temple,  the  fair  and  lovely  pattern 
of  what  we  were  each  of  us  to  be  composed  and  formed  unto  :  imitating 
us  (for  sweeter  insinuation  and  allurement)  in  what  was  merely  natural, 
and  inviting  us  to  imitate  him  in  what  was  (in  a  communicable  sort) 
supernatural  and  divine. — HOWE. 

He  took  off  those  many  superinduced  rites,  which  God  enjoined  to  the 
Jews,  and  reduced  us  to  the  natural  religion  ;  that  is,  to  such  expres- 
sions of  duty  which  all  wise  men  and  nations  used  ;  save  only,  that  he 
took  away  the  rite  of  sacrificing  beasts,  because  it  was  now  determined  in 
the  great  sacrifice  of  Himself,  which  sufficiently  and  eternally  reconciled 
all  the  world  to  God. — JEREMY  TAYLOR. 

Die  Erscheinung  des  ersten  Menschen  constituirt  zugleich  das  phy- 
sische  Leben  des  menschlichen  Geschlechts  ;  die  Erscheinung  des 
zweiten  Adam  constituirt  fur  dieselbe  Natur  das  neue  geistige  Leben, 
welches  sich  durch  geistige  Befruchtung  mittheilt  und  fortentwickelt. — 
SCHLEIERMACHER. 

Cc  qui  est  hors  de  doute,  quelque  soit  1'avenir  religieux  de  1'humanite, 
c'est  que  la  place  de  Jesus  y  sera  immense.  II  a  e"te  le  fondateur  du 
christianisme,  et  le  christianisme  reste  le  lit  du  grande  fleuve  religieux  de 
rhumanite. — REN  AN. 


PART    II 

THE   CREATION    OF  THE   CHRISTIAN    RELIGION  BY  THE 
INTERPRETATION    OF   THE    PERSON    OF   CHRIST 

INTRODUCTORY 

THE  questions  discussed  in  the  previous  part  may  be 
stated  thus :  How  did  the  Synoptists  conceive  and 
represent  Jesus  ?  and,  How  did  He  conceive  and  interpret 
Himself?  These  have  been  dealt  with  less  as  literary  and 
exegetical  than  as  historical  questions  ;  i.e.  the  meaning 
of  the  Evangelists  has  been  read  through  the  history  they 
made  as  well  as  through  the  histories  they  wrote.  This 
does  not  mean  that  the  definitions  and  dogmas  of  the  later 
creeds  have  been  interpreted  into  the  words  of  Jesus  and  1 1  is 
biographers  ;  but  that  the  men  and  their  beliefs  ought  to  be 
construed  not  simply  through  their  antecedents  and  environ- 
ment, but  also  through  the  changes  and  events  they  occasioned. 
In  other  words,  our  endeavour  has  been  to  discover  causes 
as  well  as  to  ascertain  effects  ;  for  the  logic  which  compels 
us  to  seek  a  reasonable  cause  for  nature  will  not  allow  us  to 
be  satisfied  with  a  non-rational  cause  in  history.  The  facts  we 
have  to  interpret  have  proved  themselves  factors  of  oioer  and 
progress  ;  and  while  they  have  to  be  explained  as  facts  they 
must  be  interpreted  as  factors. 

As  regards  this  inquiry,  so  far  as  it  has  proceeded,  three 
things  may  here  be  noted  :  (a)  The  field  of  research  has  been 
as  much  as  possible  restricted  to  what  it  is  the  fashion  to  call 
the  Ur- Marcus  and  iheLogia.or  the1  history  which  is  common 


436  LIMITS    OF    THE    DISCUSSION 

to  all  the  Synoptists,  and  the  collection  of  sayings  which  has 
been  so  largely  used  by  two,  Matthew  and  Luke.  The  dis- 
cussion has  not  infrequently,  indeed,  wandered  beyond  these 
sources,  but  rather  for  illustrative  or  confirmatory  purposes 
than  for  such  material  as  could  in  any  degree  affect  the 
course  and  the  validity  of  the  argument.  (/3)  As  a  consequence 
of  this  emphasis  on  their  common  matter  it  has  become 
evident  that  while  the  Synoptic  Gospels  are,  as  regards 
literary  origin,  later  than  the  oldest  Epistles,  they  show 
remarkably  few  signs  of  having  been  influenced  by  the 
Apostolical  mind  in  either  the  history  they  narrate  or  the 
sayings  they  report.  This  is  evident  in  minor  matters  like 
terms  and  incidents  as  well  as  in  major  matters  like  ideas  and 
speeches.  If  we  would  test  the  truth  of  this  statement,  we 
have  only  to  compare  the  large  place  which  the  Apocalyptic 
vision  fills  in  the  later  discourses  of  Jesus  with  the  small  space 
it  occupies  in  the  earliest  Apostolical  literature.  The  special 
matter  found  in  only  one  Gospel,  like  the  parables  peculiar 
to  Luke,  stand  on  a  different  footing.  (7)  The  conception 
of  Jesus  in  the  history  and  in  the  sayings  is  a  unity.  He 
is  the  same  person  in  both.  His  words  do  not  contradict 
His  acts  nor  His  acts  His  words.  The  character  explicated 
in  the  teaching  is  evolved  in  the  life.  This  unity  of  the 
ideal  and  the  real  is  most  significant.  Modern  criticism  has 
failed  as  signally  as  the  old  dogmatism  to  construct  a  co- 
herent image  of  the  historical  Jesus  ;  in  its  hands  He  has 
become  after  years  of  labour  and  effort  ever  less  credible  and 
less  possible.  The  idea  that  satisfies  a  consciousness  governed 
by  a  more  or  less  conventional  idea  of  nature,  will  almost 
certainly  offend  a  consciousness  governed  by  the  idea  of  the 
living  continuity  of  history. 

The  questions  to  which  we  now  pass  are  at  once  the 
converse  and  the  logical  sequents  of  those  already  discussed. 
What  idea  had  the  men  who  followed  Jesus,  the  Apostles 
and  the  Apostolic  writers,  of  His  person?  How  did  this 


AND    THE    PROBLEM    TO   BE    DISCUSSED  437 

idea  come  to  be  ?  In  what  sense  and  by  what  process  may 
it  be  said  to  Have  created  the  Christian  religion  ?  And 
what  were  the  essential  and  constitutive  elements  in  the 
interpretation  ?  These  questions  bring  us  directly  face  to 
face  with  the  Apostolic  literature,  especially  with  those  parts 
of  it  which  represent  distinct  types  of  the  idea  and  mark 
stages  in  its  expression  and  determination. 

We  have,  then,  three  main  problems  to  discuss  : — 

I.  The    interpretation    of   Christ's  Person,  which   was   the 
source  of  the  main  ideas  as  to  God  and  man  that  constituted 
the  Christian  faith. 

I 1.  The  genesis  of  the  interpretation,  or  how  the  remarkable 
idea   as   to  the   person  of    Christ  arose,  and  why    it    found 
acceptance? 

III.  The  interpretation  of  Christ's  death,  which  determined 
the  nature  and  form  of  Christian  worship. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  PERSON  AS  INTERPRETED  IN   THE  APOSTOLICAL 
LITERATURE 

IN  the  synoptic  Gospels  we  have  the  record  of  a  life  dis- 
tinguished by  many  miraculous  acts,  but  we  have  no 
explicit  philosophy  of  the  Person  who  performed  the  acts  ; 
in  the  apostolical  Epistles  we  have  a  doctrine  of  the  Person, 
but  no  history  of  His  life.  In  the  former  we  have  the  re- 
presentation of  a  real  individual  who  lived,  suffered,  and  died, 
and  who,  as  regards  His  character,  words,  and  acts,  may  be 
criticized  and  appreciated  like  any  other  historical  person  ;  in 
the  latter  we  have  this  Person  regarded  sub  specie  ceternitatis, 
interpreted  according  to  His  place  and  function  in  universal 
history  and  as  the  central  term  in  a  theology  or  system  of 
religious  thought.  The  name  of  the  uninterpreted  person,  the 
hero  of  the  spontaneous  biographies,  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but 
the  name  of  the  interpreted  person,  the  Being  who  exists  to 
thought  and  for  it,  is  Christ  ;  and  these  two  are  as  distinct 
yet  as  indissolubly  related  as  the  mathematical  diagram  on 
the  blackboard  and  the  mathematical  truth  in  the  mind, 
which  is  by  the  diagram  made  explicit  and  applied  to  the 
interpretation  of  nature.  In  other  words,  Jesus  is  a  symbol 
which  the  Epistles  explicate  for  human  belief  and  apply  to 
human  experience,  individual  and  collective.  The  local  and 
transient  supernaturalism  of  the  Gospels  becomes  in  their 
hands  a  supernaturalism  universal  and  transcendental.  But 
without  the  local  the  universal  could  not  have  been. 

438 


PAUL    A    WELL    KNOWN    MAN  439 

§   I.  .  Paul  and  the  Pauline  Literature 

I.  We  have  already  recognized  a  very  significant  fact  : 
the  literature  which  defines  and  determines  the  doctrine  of 
the  Person  is  older  than  the  literature  which  tells  the  story 
of  the  life.  The  oldest  Pauline  Epistle  is  divided  by  little 
more  than'  twenty  years  from  the  death  of  Jesus  ;  and  the 
latest  by  a  still  shorter  interval  from  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  and  the  Apocalypse.  Within  a  period  which  may 
be  thus  roughly  defined  the  doctrine  of  the  Person  had  been 
elaborated,  and,  in  its  main  lines,  fixed  by  minds  which  were 
at  once  varied  in  type  and  quite  distinct  in  their  tendencies. 
Nor  does  this  fully  state  the  case.  The  authorship  of  the 
Gospels  is  a  pure  matter  of  tradition  or  of  critical  inference. 
We  do  not  know  with  any  degree  of  certainty  by  whom,  for 
whom,  when  or  where  they  were  written.  But  there  is  nothing 
more  certain  in  ancient  literature  than  the  authorship  of  the 
more  important  of  the  Pauline  Epistles  ;  and  we  may  add 
that  the  author  himself  is  better  known  to  us  than  any 
other  writer  in  the  New  Testament,  or  probably  even  than 
any  other  person  in  antiquity.  There  is  nothing  so  perfectly 
autobiographical  as  the  expression  he  has  given  to  his 
thought  ;  or  anything  so  unconsciously  characteristic  of  the 
writer  and  descriptive  of  himself  and  his  world  as  the  literary 
forms  he  has  employed  and  the  allusions  he  has  made. 
He  has  so  written  his  thought  as  to  write  history  ;  he  has 
told  us  what  churches  he  founded,  what  difficulties  he  en- 
countered and  what  differences  he  provoked  ;  who  helped 
him  and  who  hindered.  lie  has  described  the  morals  of  the 
time  in  language  of  unparalleled  plainness  and  power;  he  has 
shown  us  the  obstinacy  of  the  Jew,  the  instability  of  the  Gaul, 
the  frivolous  and  disputatious  temper,  the  intellectual  subtlety 
and  ethical  obtuse-ness  of  the  Greek  ;  and  the  part  played  by 
the  wandering  merchant  or  mechanic  in  the  intercourse  of 
the  peoples,  in  the  distribution  of  ideas  and  the  diffusion  of 


440         PAUL   AN    EPITOME    OF    HIS    DAY 

religion.  He  has  informed  us  as  to  the  kind  of  men  that 
were  made  into  Christians  and  the  sort  of  Christians  they 
made,  the  questions  they  discussed,  the  discipline  they 
needed  and  the  Churches  enforced  ;  the  ideals  they  lived  for, 
and  their  effect  on  their  lives.  He  has  made  us  understand 
the  minds  of  the  men  who  founded  the  Church,  the  fears,  the 
jealousies,  the  tendencies  that  divided  them,  the  faith  and 
hope  that  united  them  and  made  them  better  and  greater 
builders  than  they  knew.  He  has  told  us  how  he  himself 
was  judged,  what  he  was  in  appearance,  in  speech,  in  writing  ; 
how  he  suffered  and  what  he  suffered  from  ;  how  he  per- 
suaded the  Jew  and  the  Gentile  to  live  together  and  to  help 
each  other  ;  how  his  converts  and  how  the  men  who  were 
"reputed  to  be  somewhat"  esteemed  him.  In  a  word  the 
questions  that  lie  beneath  phrases  he  lets  almost  unconsciously 
fall,  carry  us  right  into  the  heart  of  the  constructive  historical 
criticism  of  the  New  Testament. 

2.  Now  let  us  confess  that  Paul,  as  he  lives  before  us  in 
his  Epistles,  is  a  man  who  holds  many  men  within  him, — 
so  many  indeed  that  we  may  describe  him  as  the  most 
unintelligible  of  men  to  the  analytical  reason  of  a  critic  who 
has  never  warmed  to  the  passion  or  been  moved  by  the 
enthusiasm  of  humanity  ;  but  the  most  intelligible  of  men  to 
the  man  who  has  heard  within  himself  the  sound  of  all  the 
voices  that  speak  in  man.  He  is  a  Jew,  proud  of  his  blood, 
but  ashamed  of  its  hot  intolerance ;  a  Pharisee  who  has 
studied  in  the  schools  till  he  has  learnt  their  formulae  ;  a 
convert  who  finds  in  his  conversion  the  meaning  of  his  own 
and  his  people's  past ;  a  lover  of  righteousness  who  fears  his 
own  sin ;  a  believer  whose  will  to  obey  God  is  crossed  and 
weakened  and  thwarted  by  the  passion  which  will  lust ;  a 
brother  who  would  die  for  his  brethren,  yet  holds  a  faith 
which  exposes  him  to  sufferings  worse  than  death  at  their 
hands  ;  a  kinsman  disowned  of  his  own  kin,  who  could  not 
then,  and  have  never  since  been  able  to  forgive  his  desertion 


THE    MANNER   OF   THE    MAN  441 

of  their  tribal  banner  and  contempt  for  their  racial  vanity, 
though  he  has  done  more  than  any  other  son  of  the  fathers 
to  redeem  their  name  from  its  worst  vices,  and  shed  upon  it 
a  more  beneficent  light  than  streams  from  the  Ghetto  or  the 
Exchange.  He  is  a  man  who  despises  life,  yet  endures  all 
things  that  he  may  save  men  from  death  ;  a  person  without 
sentiment,  yet  of  the  most  commanding  affection,  mixing  with 
the  most  obscure  and  illiterate,  yet  speaking  to  them  with  the 
courtesy  which  ought  to  be  cultivated  by  the  sons  of  God  ; 
a  man  hated,  hunted,  persecuted,  denied  the  comforts  of 
home,  the  cheer  and  the  joy  of  woman's  love,  the  tenderness 
and  trust  of  children  he  could  call  his  own,  yet  writing  the 
grandest  words  in  praise  of  love  which  ever  came  from 
human  pen  ;  a  man  who  was  mean  outwardly,  yet  inwardly 
endowed  with  such  strength  as  to  lift  the  solid  earth  of 
religious  custom,  prejudice,  and  convention  from  off  its  axis. 
He  uses  a  tongue  which  is  in  its  words  Greek  but  in  its  most 
distinctive  idioms  Hebrew,  an  inchoate  dialect  spoken  by 
mixed  peoples,  which  his  thought,  too  massive  and  molten 
to  be  easily  articulated,  burdens  with  technical  terms,  ex- 
ceptional usages  and  broken  sentences  hard  to  be  understood 
or  subdued  into  grammatical  continuity,  but  which  his  ima- 
gination so  charges  now  and  then  with  splendid  images  as  to 
lift  it  into  the  highest  poetry,  breathing  the  hope  that  neither 
suffering  nor  death  can  shame,  the  love  that  is  as  high  as  God 
and  vast  as  eternity.  So  potent  is  he  that  he  makes  out  of 
the  tongue  he  uses  a  sacred  language,  compelling,  almost  in 
spite  of  itself,  the  religion  he  has  embraced  to  forget  its 
native  speech  and  speak  the  Gentile  tongue  he  speaks,  that 
it  may  be  the  more  quickly  communicated  and  become  the 
more  readily  intelligible  to  the  civili/ed  \vorld.  In  him  the 
past  of  his  faith  is  epitomized  and  its  future  is  foretold.  lie- 
starts  as  a  Je\v,  a  zealot  in  "the  Jews'  religion,"  becomes  a 
disciple  of  the  Jesus  he  had  persecuted,  an  apostle  of  the 
Christ  he  had  despised  ;  and  he  is  driven  by  a  logic  which  is 


442          THE    MANY-SIDED   PERSONALITY 

not  so  much  his  servant  as  his  master  to  "  preach  among  the 
Gentiles "  "  the  faith  of  which  he  had  once  made  havoc."  ] 
And  he  not  only  foresaw  the  end,  but  he  even  began  to 
garner  the  fruits  of  the  land  towards  which  he  was  leading 
the  Church.  Among  the  last  of  his  words  these  stand 
written  :  "  All  the  saints  salute  you,  especially  they  that  are 
A  Caesar's  household."  2 

Paul,  then,  is  the  greatest  literary  figure  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment ;  round  him  all  its  burning  questions  lie.  Looked  at  as 
an  historical  question,  say  certain  minor  critics,  Baur  spared 
too  much  when  he  argued  that  the  four  great  Pauline  Epistles 
were  authentic,  for  they  leave  all  that  is  most  supernatural 
in  Christianity  standing  in  its  oldest  period  and  attested  by 
its  oldest  monuments.  They  leave  also  Paul  in  a  position  too 
large  for  any  man,  and  force  us  to  conceive  him  to  be  as  large 
as  his  position.  Hence  a  strained  hypercriticism  has  of  late 
attempted  to  reduce  to  intelligibility  one  who  is  not  so  much 
a  single  man  as  a  multitude  of  men,  though  the  multitude 
form  only  a  many-sided  personal  unity  ;  and  so  they  have 
analyzed  the  multitudinous  unity  into  a  number  of  atoms, 
each  in  size  and  shape  convenient  and  comprehensible.  And 
so  we  have  had  the  Paul  of  our  documents  decomposed  into 
three  men,  (a)  the  authentic  portrait  of  the  "  We-sections  " 
in  the  Acts,  (/3)  the  man  of  the  fragments  saved  from  the 
wreckage  of  the  Epistles,  and  (7)  the  man  of  the  completed 
Acts,  the  creation  of  primitive  harmonistic.  And  then  the 
Epistles  have  to  be  so  decomposed  as  to  assent,  as  it  were,  to 
the  decomposition  of  their  author.  But,  happily,  this  criticism 
is  sporadic  and  incidental  ;  the  main  body  of  critics  who  are 
also  scholars  holding  that  the  authenticity  of  the  greater 
Pauline  Epistles  is  beyond  doubt.  And  beyond  doubt  we 
may  hold  them  to  be.  There  are  no  writings  so  little  capable 
of  being  explained  by  conscious  or  unconscious  invention,  or 
any  trick  of  the  pseudonymous  imagination.  They  are  filled 
1  Gal.  i.  1 6,  17.  *  Phil.  iv.  22. 


A    CONSISTENT    UNITY  4413 

by  one  mind,  the  personality  is  one  ;  so  are  the  speech 
and  the  mode'  of  argument.  The  attitude  to  friend,  to  foe, 
to  beliefs  held  and  renounced,  to  Church  and  world,  to  the 
brothers  he  had  forsaken,  to  the  brethren  who  had  but  half 
welcomed  him,  to  the  disciples  who  would  have  plucked  out 
their  .-yes  and  have  given  them  to  him,  remains  throughout 
consistently  one  and  the  same.  This  higher  consistency  is 
only  emphasized  by  the  minor  inconsistencies  of  mood  and 
moment  ;  for  these  were  certain  to  come  to  one  who  lived  so 
strenuous  a  life,  so  changeful  in  those  outward  circumstances 
which  most  affect  a  man's  heart  and  imagination,  so  un- 
changeable in  those  tendencies  and  inner  convictions  which 

o 

most  govern  the  mind.  We  must,  therefore,  content  ourselves 
with  simply  affirming  the  point  that  there  are  no  questions 
in  ancient  literature  more  certainly  determined  than  the  au- 
thenticity of  the  Epistles  which  first  formulated  the  belief  in 
Christ's  supernatural  person  and  their  priority  to  all  the 
written  Histories  of  His  life. 

§  II.      The  Person  of  Christ  in  tlie  Pauline  Epistles 

Xow  when  we  come  to  compare  the  Pauline  literature 
with  the  Synoptic  Gospels,  we  find,  as  respects  the  treatment 
of  the  Person  of  Christ,  two  remarkable  points  of  contrast. 

i.  The  biographical  matter  of  the  Epistles  is,  on  the  whole, 
simpler  than  that  of  the  Gospels.  The  miracles  which  play 
so  great  a  part  in  the  latter  have,  with  one  conspicuous 
exception,  no  place  in  the  former.  Our  reason  is  not  per- 
plexed by  any  narrative  of  the  supernatural  birth,  or  any 
incident  like  that  of  the  Gadarene  swine;  we  do  not  read  of 
hungry  thousands  being  fed,  or  of  fish  being  charmed  into 
a  n  .-t  or  money  extracted  from  one  just  caught  in  the  lake  ; 
of  this  woman  being  healed  of  an  issue  of  blood,  or  of 
that  paralytic  man  being  made  whole  ;  of  a  widow's  son 
raised  from  the  dead  or  a  buried  brother  called  back  from 
the  tomb.  In  a  word,  no  attempt  whatever  is  made  to  array 


444          CHRIST'S    HISTORICAL    POVERTY 

Jesus  in  the  garments  of  miracle  or  to  make  Him  live  and 
move  in  a  cycle  of  wonders.  On  the  contrary,  He  is  set  amid 
a  sordid  poverty  of  incident,  and  lives  a  life  which  is  more 
remarkable  for  its  humiliation  and  feebleness  than  for  its 
majesty  or  manifest  divinity.  He  is  born  of  a  woman,  and 
born  under  the  law.1  He  springs  from  Israel,  and  is,  according 
to  the  flesh,  from  the  tribe  of  Judah  and  the  seed  of  David.2 
He  lives  in  the  form  of  a  servant,3  and  is  unknown  to  the 
princes  of  this  world.4  He  is  poor,  hated,  persecuted, 
crucified.5  He  is  betrayed  at  nigh4:,  just  after  He  had  in- 
stituted the  Supper.6  He  dies  on  the  cross,  to  which  He 
had  been  fastened  with  nails,  and  is  buried.7  There  is  no 
attempt  to  idealize  these  things,  to  veil  their  squalor,  or 
soften  their  harsher  features  ;  rather  are  they  emphasized  and 
magnified  as  if  they  added  lustre  to  the  Person  and  were 
matters  in  which  His  admirers  found  their  proudest  cause  for 
glorying. 

2.  But  this  poverty  of  outward  incident  in  the  life  lends  all 
the  more  significance  to  the  remarkable  contrast  between  the 
local  and  particular  supernaturalism  of  the  histories  and  the 
universal  and  absolute  supernaturalism  of  those  apostolic 
Epistles  which  originated  so  soon  after  His  death.  What 
stands  there  is  a  miracle  of  act  and  incident ;  what  appears 
here  is  a  Person  so  miraculous  as  to  change  the  whole  face 
of  nature  and  history,  and  make  it  as  miraculous  as  Himself. 

(a)  He  is  so  conceived  that  the  race  by  His  presence  in  it 
becomes  a  stupendous  organism,  with  a  continuous  history, 
a  common  life,  realized  by  its  units  yet  incorporated  in  the 
laws,  customs,  and  tendencies  they  all  obey.  But  the  life  of 
the  race  is  not  simply  physical,  it  is,  though  absolutely 
different  in  quality  from  His,  yet  as  ethical  as  He  Himself 

1  Gal.  iv.  4.  s  Rom.  ix.  5  ;  i.  3. 

8  Phil.  ii.  7.  4  i  Cor.  ii.  8. 

5  2  Cor.  viii.  9  ;  Gal.  vi.  14  ;  I  Cor.  i.  23-25,  ii.  2. 

6  I  Cor.  xi.  23.  7    I  Cor.  xv.  3,  4  ;   Col.  ii.  14. 


AND    HIS    IDEAL    MAJESTY  445 

is  ;  and  indicates  that  man,  as  regards  the  constituent  ele- 
ments of  his  nature,  falls  under  the  law  which  in  the  case  of 
Jesus  made  His  character  of  the  very  essence  of  His  being. 
And  the  character  He  bears  is  creative  and  normative  ;  it 
institutes  a  type  and  propagates  the  type  it  institutes. 
While  all  men  have  sinned,1  He  alone  knows  no  sin.~  The 
sin  which  all  men  know  entered  the  world  by  the  first  man, 
and  death  so  came  in  with  sin  that  the  two  reign  together 
over  mankind  ;  but  by  Christ  came  righteousness  and  through 
it  the  life  which  cancels  death.3  And  so  over  against  the 
sinning  Adam  and  his  sinful  posterity  stands  the  sinless  and 
quickening  Christ  with  His  household  of  faith.4  The  flesh  of 
man  is  sinful  and  mortal,  but  He  assumed  flesh  that  He  might 
condemn  sin  and  create  life.5  While  Adam,  the  first  man, 
was  but  a  "living  soul,"  the  second  man  was  "a  life-giving 
Spirit";  while  Adam  was  of  the  earth,  earthy,  Christ  is  of 
heaven  and  heavenly/'  And  as  He  is  His  shall  be.  To  be 
joined  to  Him  is  to  be  "one  spirit"  with  Him.7  To  be  "  in 
Christ"  is  to  be  "a  new  creature"8  "conformed  to  His 
image,"  9  and  "  to  the  body  of  His  glory,"  10  for  as  "  we  have 
borne  the  image  of  the  earthy,  we  shall  also  bear  the  image 
of  the  heavenly."  n  And  these  "  new  creatures  "  are  not  a 
multitude  of  disconnected  grains ;  they  are  built  into  an 
organism  and  become  "one  body,"  "  the  body  of  Christ,"13  the 
home  of  His  Spirit,  the  agency  by  which  He  accomplishes 
His  will  and  shows  Himself  unto  men.11  To  be  Christ's  is  to 
be  God's,  to  enjoy  liberty,  and  to  see  God  face  to  face.14 
Hence  collective  man  is  represented  as,  apart  from  Him, 
alienated  from  God,  sinful  and  dying  because  of  sin  ;  but 

1   Rom.  iii.  23.  -  2  Cor.  v.  21. 

3   Rom.  v.  12-21.  4   r  Cor.  \v.  21,  22  :   Eph.  ii.  19-22. 

5    Rom.  viii.  3,  II  ;   2  Cor.  iv.  10,  II.  n    I   Cor.  xv.  45  -49. 

7    I  Cor.  vi.  17.  8  2  Cor.  v.  17. 

9   Rom.  viii.  29.  1U    I'liil.  iii.  21. 

11    I  Cor.  xv.  49  ;  cf.  Eph.  ii.  5.  6.  13    i  Cor.  xii.  12,  27. 

1:i  Eph.  iv.  1 6,   i.  23  ;  Col.  ii.  19.  u    I  Lor.  iii.  23  ;  2  Cor.  iii.  17.  18. 


446  MAN   UNITED    IN    HIM 

through  Him  men  can  be  reconciled  to  God,  learn  obedi- 
ence, and  be  built  into  a  new  humanity,  exercised  in  right- 
eousness, and  ruled  by  love.1  Now  this  was  an  idea  without 
any  parallel  in  the  history  of  human  belief ;  so  it  has  the 
most  manifest  right  to  be  called  a  new  idea.  No  one  in  any 
prior  philosophy  or  scheme  of  thought  had  been  conceived  as 
so  affecting  the  notion  and  life  of  humanity,  so  determining  its 
constitution,  so  defining  its  character,  so  giving  value  to  each 
separate  unit,  unity  to  its  whole  being,  community  to  its 
interests,  and  continuity  to  its  history  ;  in  other  words,  as 
creating  by  his  very  being  order  and  coherence  in  the  chaotic 
and  heterogeneous  mass  of  conscious  but  unconnected  atoms 
which  we  call  mankind. 

(/3)  But  this  is  the  least  wonderful  aspect  of  this  audacious 
endeavour  at  the  interpretation  of  an  historical  individual 
as  a  universal,  i.e.  as  an  absolutely  supernatural  and  creative 
personality.  For  His  relation  to  man  has  its  counterpart 
and  complement  in  His  relation  to  God.  Here  the  same 
singular  and  transcendental  qualities  are  made  to  distinguish 
Him.  He  is  to  God  what  no  other  being  has  been  before 
Him  or  can  be  after  Him.  He  is  the  Son  of  God,  the 
firstborn,  begotten  before  all  creation.2  He  is  the  image  of 
the  invisible  God  ;  He  sits  at  God's  right  hand  ;  He  upholds 
all  things  by  the  word  of  His  power,  constitutes  all  things 
into  order  or  system  ;  in  other  words,  His  cosmical  relations 
are  as  absolute  and  creative  as  His  historical  are  directive 
and  judicial.3  And  His  work  is  one  which  is  worthy  of  the 
highest  God  :  it  is  to  create  a  new  humanity  and  to  be  its 
Head.4  His  appearance  is  no  chance  or  happy  accident,  but 
fulfils  an  eternal  purpose.5  And  His  coming  is  His  own 
a,.t,  for  though  rich,  it  is  for  our  sakes  that  He  became  poor,6 

1  Rom.  v.  12-21.  *  Rom.  i.  2,  viii.  29,  32  ;  cf.  Col.  i.  15. 

'  Col.  i.  15-17  ;  i  Cor.  xv.  24,  25  ;  2  Cor.  v.  10. 
4  Eph.  ii.  19-22  ;  Col.  i.  18.  5  Eph.  i.  4,  ii.  9-11. 

6  2  Cor.  viii.  9. 


AND    IN    HIM   GOD    MANIFESTED          447 

or,  to  use  the  graphic  phrase  of  another  Pauline  text,  that  He 
"emptied  Himself"  (eavrov  ttcevwcrev}.1  And  so  He  is  con- 
ceived, not  as  one  who  begins  to  be,  but  as  one  who  has 
ever  been  and  will  ever  be  ;  He  through  Whom  are  all 
things.2  The  very  dignity  and  prerogatives  of  Deity  arc 
claimed  for  Him.  He  is  said  to  be  so  in  the  form  of  God 
as  to  be  under  no  need  of  counting  it  a  prize  to  be  on  an 
equality  with  God,3  and  does  not  this  mean  that  to  Paul 
He  already  possessed  the  divine  nature  and  majesty?  In  all 
things  He  has  the  pre-eminence.4  Even  the  unity  which  is 
the  ultimate  attribute  of  Deity  is  not  denied  Him.  As  there 
is  but  one  God  and  Father,  so  there  is  but  one  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  ;  5  in  Him  are  hid  all  the  treasures  of  wisdom  and 
knowledge;6  in  Him  dwells  all  the  fulness  of  the  Godhead 
bodily,7  and  His  love  can  as  little  be  measured  as  the  love 
of  God,s  for  He  is  indeed  in  very  truth  God's  love  towards 
man. 

§   III.      TJie  Idea  in  Hebreivs  and  tJie  Apocalypse 

But  the  interpretation  of  the  person  is  not  peculiar  to  the 
Pauline  theology  ;  if  it  were,  it  might  be  regarded  as  the 
illusion  of  a  mind  intoxicated  with  metaphysics,  or  accus- 
tomed to  the  dreamland  of  an  ecstatic  mysticism.  But  the 
idea,  so  far  from  being  singular,  pervades  a  whole  literature, 
though  all  we  can  do  here  is  to  select  its  most  representative 
types. 

I.  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  is  not  Paul's,  but  it  has 
many  Pauline  affinities.  It  is  the  work  of  a  man  who  knew 
Philo  and  Alexandria  as  Paul  knew  Jerusalem  and  Gamaliel. 
Its  outlook  is  less  wide  and  more  special  ;  it  thinks  more  of 
the  Jews  and  less  of  man.  But  its  philosophy,  if  narrower, 

1  Phil.  ii.  7.  •   i  Cor.  viii.  6. 

8  Phil.  ii.  6.  *  Col.  i.  18. 

1  i  Cor.  viii.  6  ;  Eph.  iv.  5.  6  Col.  ii.  3. 

7  Col.  ii.  <;.  s   Eph.  iii.  19. 


448   RELIGIOUS    PERSONALITY    INTERPRETED 

is  more  reasoned  in  its  principles  and  detailed  in  its  applica- 
tion. The  rhetorical  style,  the  technical  terms,  the  occasional 
preciosity  of  phrase,  the  love  of  analogies,  the  interpretation 
of  history  as  allegory  and  of  institutions  as  symbols  or  parables, 
speak  of  the  school  in  which  the  writer  had  studied.  But 
the  marvellous  thing  is  the  way  in  which  the  new  idea  lifts 
the  man  above  his  school,  enlarges  his  outlook,  and  completes 
his  thought.  The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  may  be  termed 
the  most  finished  treatise  of  the  Alexandrian  philosophy  ;  it 
grapples  more  successfully  than  any  other  with  the  problems 
of  nature,  mind  and  history.  And  it  does  this  in  the  strength 
of  its  new  idea  :  what  the  person  of  Christ  signifies  for  God, 
for  man  and  for  religion.  On  the  speculative  side  it  re-inter- 
prets God  and  makes  creation  intelligible  ;  on  the  historical, 
it  exalts  man  and  turns  his  life  into  a  process  of  growth  and 
education  ;  on  the  religious,  it  finds  a  unity  of  idea  within 
diversity  of  form,  and  it  proves  faith  to  be  universal  and 
constant,  for  its  object  is  "the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and 
for  ever."  1 

The  author  was  indeed  no  ear-  or  eyewitness  of  the  Lord,3 
but  he  speaks  as  one  familiar  with  His  history  on  both  its 
brighter  and  its  darker  sides.  He  knew  of  His  descent,3  of 
His  preaching  and  the  signs  and  wonders  which  accompanied 
it,4  of  the  temptations  He  endured,5  of  the  contradiction  He 
had  to  bear  from  sinners,6  of  the  agony  in  the  garden,7  of  the 
death  upon  the  cross,8  of  the  hill  "outside  the  gate"  \vhere 
He  suffered,9  and  of  His  being  raised  from  the  dead.10  His 
humanity  is  real,11  and  He  is  distinguished  by  being  unblem- 
ished,12 by  "godly  fear,"  docility,  amenability  to  discipline;1* 
by  mercy,  grace  and  fidelity  towards  men,14  and  by  obedi- 
ence, faith  and  patience  towards  God.15  Jesus  is  "  without 

1  xiii.  8.  2  ii.  3.  a  vii.  14.  4  ii.  3,  4. 

5  ii.  1 8,  iv.  15.      6  xii.  3.  7  v.  7.  8  xii.  2. 

6  xiii.  12.  "'  xiii.  20.  n   ii.  14,  17.  12  ix.  14. 

13  v.  18.  u  ii.  17,  iv.  15.    15  iii.  2,  v.  8,  ii.  13,  x.  5-  7,  xii.  2. 


THROUGH  THE  ALEXANDRIAN  PHILOSOPHY  449 

sin";1  He  is  "holy,  guileless,  undefiled,  and  separated  from 
sinners."2  The  author  so  speaks  of  the  historical  person  as 
to  show  that  his  knowledge  was  equal  to  his  love,  and  his 
love  of  the  intensest  and  most  commanding  order.  And 
yet  without  any  sense  of  incongruity,  or  of  intellectual 
discord,  or  of  rational  violence,  he  speaks  of  this  Jesus  as 
"  the  Son  of  God," 3  and  of  this  Son  as  the  Maker  of  the 
worlds,  the  effulgence  of  God's  glory  and  the  very  image 
of  His  substance  ;  as  the  heir  of  all  things,  begotten  of  God, 
His  firstborn,  to  whom  He  said,  "  Thy  throne,  O  God,  is  for 
ever  and  ever."4  Jesus  is  indeed  described  as  having  been 
made  "  a  little  lower  than  the  angels";5  but  though  He  be- 
comes partaker  of  "  flesh  and  blood  " 6  He  does  not  cease  to 
be  Son  or  lose  His  high  prerogatives  ;  nay,  He  becomes  this 
only  that  He  may  on  a  new  and  higher  plane  carry  out  His 
divine  creative  and  administrative  functions.  The  Mediator 
of  creation  becomes  "the  Mediator  of  the  New  Covenant"  ;7 
"the  heir  of  all  things"  becomes  the  builder  of  God's  house,8 
and  so  the  architect  of  an  edifice  whose  material  is  "  living 
stones"  and  not  dead  "things."  Hence  new  titles  come  to 
Him:  He  is  "the  High  Priest  of  our  confession,"9  and  as 
such  He  is  "  without  father,  without  mother,  without  genea- 
logy, having  neither  beginning  of  days  nor  end  of  life." ' 
As  such  He  is  the  essence  or  Spirit  of  all  religious  institu- 
tions, the  Creator  of  the  men  of  faith  and  sanctity  under 
the  old  covenant,  the  inaugurator  who  is  also  the  sum  and 
substance  of  the  new.  His  concealed  presence  in  the  old 
was  the  reason  of  its  being  ;  His  revealed  presence  in  the 
new  is  the  cause  of  its  life.  In  Him  God  and  man,  eternity 
and  time,  creation  and  history,  the  ancient  and  transient 
religion  of  sense  and  the  perennial  and  permanent  religion 
of  the  Spirit,  find  their  unity.  It  is  a  high  dream  and  a 

1   iv.  15.  2  vii.  26.  8  v.  5.                    4  i.  2-8. 

5  ii.  9.  6  ii.  14.  T  xii.  24.              8  iii.  3. 

u  iii.    i.  1(l  vii.  3. 
P.C.R.                                                                                                              29 


450      THE    PERSON    IN   THE    APOCALYPSE 

spacious  philosophy,  cast  perhaps  into  a  form  congenial  to 
minds  which  thought  concerning  the  New  Testament  in  the 
categories  of  the  Old,  but  representing  truths  which  the 
speculative  reason  has  unweariedly  felt  after  without  being 
able  to  find.  And  the  whole  is  the  spontaneous  creation  of 
the  new  idea  as  to  the  person  of  Christ. 

2.  The  Apocalypse  is  in  form,  occasion,  standpoint,  method, 
purpose,  the  very  antithesis  of  both  Paul  and  Hebrews. 
Under  one  aspect  it  is  the  most  Jewish,  under  another  it  is 
the  most  anti-Judaic  writing  in  the  New  Testament.  It  is 
possessed  of  the  idea  that  the  spiritual  Israel  is  to  supersede 
the  Israel  of  the  flesh,  and  that  the  new  Jerusalem  is  to 
displace  and  supplant  the  old  ;  but  it  holds  the  idea  in  the 
face  of  a  recent  and  most  imperious  dread.  In  place  of 
Paul's  fear  of  the  Judaizer,  of  the  alarm  which  the  author 
of  Hebrews  feels  lest  his  kinsmen  should  draw  back,  there 
has  come  terror  of  Rome.  The  seer  has  watched  the  giant 
awaken  from  his  sleep,  and  dye  his  hands  in  the  blood  of 
the  saints.  And  it  is  not  the  majesty  of  Rome  that  has 
awakened,  but  the  ferocity  of  her  emperor.  And  a  ferocious 
man  is  more  terrible  than  any  wild  beast,  most  terrible  of 
all  when  he  sits  on  a  throne  which  enables  him  to  indulge 
his  lust  for  blood.  It  is  this  fear  of  the  brute  who  has 
reigned  and  is  to  reign  that  fills  the  Apocalypse  ;  but  over 
against  it  stands  the  hope  that  stills  terror.  Above  the  masters 
of  the  earth  sits  the  King  of  kings,  and  He  shall  compel 
even  the  wrath  of  man  to  praise  Him.1  He,  too,  has  shed  His 
blood  like  a  martyr.2  His  blood  is  real,  for  He  is  of  the  tribe 
of  Judah  and  the  house  of  David.3  He  died,  but  now  He 
lives  for  evermore.4  He  redeems  and  governs  the  new  Israel.6 
He  is  Alpha  and  Omega,6  occupies  the  throne  of  God,7  is 
worshipped  and  adored,8  judges  the  nations,  and  is  terrible 

1  Rev.  xvii.  14,  xix.  16.  *  i.  5.  *  v.  5. 

4  i.  1 8.  5  i.  6.  •  i.  17,  18.  T  vi.  16. 

8  v.  8-14  ;  cf.  vii.  12. 


AND   IN    THE    FOURTH   GOSPEL  45 1 

to  the  kings  of  the  earth.1  We  have  so  little  sympathy  with 
the  Apocalyptic  spirit,  so  feel  its  elaborate  visions,  its  violent 
ecstasies,  recondite  metaphors,  and  mystic  numbers  to  be  alien 
to  the  modern  mind,  that  we  can  hardly  discover  the  imagin- 
ation that  penetrates  and  illumines  it.  But  one  thing  is 
obvious :  all  it  has  of  foresight  and  permanent  worth  it 
owes  to  its  idea  of  Christ  and  the  place  it  assigns  to  Him. 

§  IV.      The  Idea  in  the  Gospel  of  John 

But  the  most  significant  and  picturesque  presentation  of 
the  idea  is  to  be  found  in  the  history  ascribed  to  the  Apostle 
John.  The  Fourth  Gospel  seems  in  form,  in  style,  and  in 
tone  a  work  of  lucid  and  ingenuous  simplicity,  but  in  matter 
and  idea  it  is,  speculatively,  the  most  audacious  book  in  the 
New  Testament.  It  ventures  to  do  what  neither  Paul  nor 
Hebrews  had  attempted— to  bring  the  speculative  idea  of 
Christ  into  direct  relation  with  the  history  of  Jesus  ;  yet 
without  this  their  discussions  wanted  the  touch  of  reality. 
Fur  the  ideal  Christ  represents  a  thesis  comparatively  easy 
to  expound  and  defend  ;  but  the  actual  Jesus  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  the  ideal  presents  a  problem  infinitely  more 
complex  and  difficult.  To  conceive  a  transcendental  ideal 
which  is  the  unity  of  Deity  and  humanity,  to  seek  a  pro- 
phecy for  it  in  history  and  a  need  for  it  in  nature,  to  find 
in  it  the  end  towards  which  all  religions  yearn,  and  the 
latent  thought  which  all  philosophers  have  laboured  to  ex- 
press— is  simply  to  charge  oneself  with  the  elaboration  of  a 
system  which  is  none  the  less  intellectual  that  it  is  dedicated 
to  a  religious  purpose.  But  the  Fourth  Gospel  essavs  a 
mightier  problem,  viz.  to  connect  the  person  and  the  historv 
of  Jesus,  on  the  one  hand,  with  the  inmost  being  of  God,  and, 
on  the  other,  with  the  course  and  end  of  the  universe. 

I.  The  idea  and  purpose  of  the  writer  can  best  be  under- 
stood through  the  prologue  which  introduces  the  history.- 
1  ii.  26,  27.  '  i.  1-18. 


452    THE  PROLOGUE:  ITS  THEOLOGY 

He  begins  at  a  higher  altitude  than  the  ancient  seer  who  saw 
God  "  in  the  beginning  "  create  the  world,  for  he  attempts  to 
define  the  sort  of  God  who  created.  Eternity  was  not  to  him 
a  solitude,  nor  God  a  solitary.  God  had  never  been  alone, 
for  with  Him  was  the  Logos,  and  the  Logos  was  at  once 
God,  and  "  in  the  beginning  face  to  face  with  God."  (Ovro* 
r)v  ev  <ipxfi  ^po?  TOV  #eov.)  And  He  was  organ  of  the 
Godhead  in  the  work  of  creation  :  "  all  things  were  made 
by  Him."  And  the  life  He  gave  He  possessed  ;  in  Him  the 
creation  lived,  and  His  life  was  its  light.  But  this  light  was 
confronted  by  a  darkness  which  would  not  be  overcome, 
though  it  was  not  possible  that  the  Logos  should  consent  to 
have  His  light  overcome  of  the  darkness.  In  brief  but  preg- 
nant phrases  the  author  describes  the  method  and  means 
which  the  Logos  used  in  this  supreme  conflict.  His  relation 
to  the  creation  never  ceased  ;  at  every  point  and  every 
moment  He  was  active  within  it.  In  this  way  he  stood  dis- 
tinguished from  the  prophet  or  preacher,  who  had  his  most 
recent  type  in  the  Baptist.  John  was  a  man  sent  from  God 
for  an  occasion ;  before  it  he  had  no  being,  after  it  he  had  no 
function  ;  his  sole  duty  was  to  be  a  witness,  to  testify  con- 
cerning the  Light  "  in  order  that  all  men  through  him  might 
believe."  Over  against  this  ephemeral  witness-bearer,  who 
appears,  lives  his  brief  day,  does  his  little  work,  and  then 
departs,  stands  the  true,  the  Eternal  Light.  He  shines  for  ever 
and  everywhere  ;  illumines  all  men,  even  though  they  be  held 
to  be  heathen.  With  threefold  emphasis  the  idea  is  repeated : 
"He  \\as  in  the  world,"  did  not  enter  or  come  to  be  within  it, 
but  abode  in  it,  was  as  old  as  it,  is  as  young  as  it,  unaffected 
by  birth,  untouched  by  death.  He  was,  and  had  always 
been,  for  "  the  world  was  made  by  Him  "  ;  Man — no  selected 
people  simply,  but  collective  Man — was  made  by  Him,  and 
how  could  He  desert  the  work  of  His  own  hands  ?  But  it 
had  deserted  Him  :  "  the  world  knew  Him  not."  The  peoples 
loved  the  darkness  and  knew  not  the  Li"-ht.  Even  those  who 


AND   RELATION    TO   THE    HISTORY        453 

claimed  to  be  the  elect  were  blind.  "  He  came  unto  His 
own,  and  His  own  received  Him  not."  The  children  of  the 
covenant,  the  heirs  of  the  promise,  had  been  no  better  than 
the  heathen :  the  Logos  who  lived  and  worked  in  their  midst 
they  did  not  know.  But  in  one  respect  they  had  greater 
excellence  :  sight  was  granted  to  some,  a  remnant  saw  and 
believed,  and  He  of  His  grace  gave  them  the  right  to  "  be- 
come children  of  God."  And  this  adoption  came  not  of 
blood  or  descent  or  act  of  man  ;  it  was  "of  God."  It  was  a 
vain  boast  to  say,  "We  have  Abraham  to  our  father";  the 
only  title  to  divine  sonship  came  of  divine  grace.  And  now 
there  arrived  the  supreme  moment  in  human  experience  :  the 
Logos,  who  was  Creator  and  uncreated  Light,  who  had  never 
ceased  to  be  related  to  all  men  or  to  be  without  His  own 
even  among  the  Jews,  "  He  became  flesh."  The  phrase  is 
peculiar  ;  he  does  not  say,  as  in  the  case  of  John,  eyeveTo 
cii'0pa)7ro<f  aTrecrraXftej/o?  Trapa  6eov,  "  there  came  a  man  sent 
from  God  "  ;  but  he  says,  6  ^6709  crap%  eyevero,  "the  Word  be- 
came flesh."  There  is  no  break  in  this  continuity;  it  is  the 
same  \Vord  who  was  with  God,  who  was  God,  who  made  the 
worlds,  who  was  the  true  Light,  who  shone  in  the  darkness, 
who  continued  to  shine  among  the  heathen,  who  visited  His 
own,  and  graciously  made  those  who  believed  sons  of  God, 
who  now  becomes  flesh.  And  what  He  becomes  (o"«'p£)  em- 
phasizes the  visible  mortal  man,  man  not  in  contrast  to 
animal,  but  in  antithesis  to  God,  the  invisible,  eternal,  im- 
palpable Deity.  Paul  loved  to  express  the  sacrifice  or  re- 
nunciation of  the  Son — "though  rich,  yet  for  our  sakes  lie 
became  poor,"  "though  in  the  form  of  God  lie  emptied 
Himself";  but  John  here  expresses  the  unity  of  the  Being 
within  the  difference  of  the  acts  and  relations.  He  who  did 
all  these  high  things  is  the  self-same  Logos,  as  lie  who  now 
becomes  flesh.  And  in  this  form,  in  contrast  to  His  previous 
invisible  though  illuminative  universality,  He  dwells  among 
men,  lives  face  to  face  with  them  even  as  in  the  beginning  lie 


454        THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    THE    LOGOS 

had  been  with  God.  But  lest  the  intellectual  term  Logos 
should  be  resolved  into  an  abstraction  or  mere  figure  of  speech, 
a  significant  change  is  made  in  the  terms  employed.  "  The 
Word  become  flesh  "  is  described  as  "  only-begotten  from  the 
Father,"  the  bearer  of  "  grace  and  truth "  to  men.  And  as 
such  He  is  identified  with  Jesus  Christ.  And  this  marvellous 
conception  is  finally  explained  and  justified  by  a  principle  of 
widest  reach  :  "  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time  ;  the 
only-begotten  Son  which  is  in  the  bosom  of  the  Father,  He 
hath  declared  Him."  This  principle  we  may  paraphrase  and 
explain  thus :  "  Monotheism  has  failed  because  men  have 
found  the  invisible  to  be  an  inaccessible  God  ;  they  feel  after 
Him,  and  want  to  handle  Him  ;  but  one  who  is  simply  the 
negation  of  all  their  experience  they  can  neither  conceive 
nor  believe.  And  so  He  has  stooped  to  their  need,  and  has 
sent  out  from  His  own  bosom,  clothed  in  palpable  flesh  and 
blood,  His  only-begotten  Son,  that  He  might  declare  Him, 
make  Him  actual,  visible,  tangible  to  the  dwellers  in  the 
world  of  sense."  That  was  the  principle  the  gospel  was  to 
illustrate  ;  whether  it  has  been  confuted  or  confounded  by 
collective  experience,  is  a  matter  of  too  common  knowledge 
to  need  to  be  here  discussed. 

2.  But  the  remarkable  thing  in  the  gospel  is  not  so  much 
the  Prologue  as  the  History  which  it  introduces,  and  by  which 
it  is  explicated.  Analytical  criticism  has  much  to  say  as  to 
the  Hellenic  and  Hellenistic  sources  of  the  terms  and  ideas 
which  the  Evangelist  makes  use  of.  ^0709  is  one  of  the 
dark  terms  we  owe  to  Heraclitus  ;  from  him  it  passed  into 
the  school  of  the  Stoics,  and  was  there  stamped  with  their 
image  and  superscription.  In  the  Hellenism  of  Alexandria 
it  played  a  great  part,  and  was  made  by  Philo  a  mediator 
between  God  and  the  universe,  with  a  vast  variety  of  names 
and  functions  :  He  conceived  it  now  as  abstract,  now  as  per- 
sonal ;  described  it  now  as  archangel,  now  as  archetype  ;  here 
as  the  Idea  idcarum  which  is  ever  with  God,  there  as  "  the 


AND    THE    HISTORY    OF   JESUS  455 

everlasting  law  of  the  eternal  God,  which  is  the  most  stable 
avH  secure  support  of  the  universe."  Philo's  logos  is  now  the 
image  of  God,  now  His  eldest  or  firstborn  Son,  and  again 
the  organ  by  which  He  made  the  world.  Here  God  is  light, 
and  the  Word  its  archetype  and  example  ;  and  there  God  is 
life,  while  all  who  live  irrationally  (a\6yw^  are  separated 
from  the  life  which  is  in  Him.  It  is  not  to  be  doubted,  then, 
that  John  neither  invented  his  transcendental  terms  nor  the 
ideas  they  expressed.  But  he  did  a  more  daring  and  original 
thing — he  brought  them  out  of  the  clouds  into  the  market- 
place, incorporated,  personalized,  individuated  them.  He 
distinctly  saw  what  the  man  who  had  coined  the  terms  had 
been  dimly  feeling  after — that  a  solitary  Deity  was  an  impo- 
tent abstraction,  without  life,  without  love,  void  of  thought, 
incapable  of  movement,  and  divorced  from  all  reality.  But 
his  vision  passed  through  the  region  of  speculation,  and 
discovered  the  Person  who  realized  his  ideal.  Logos  he 
translated  by  Son,  and  in  doing  so  he  did  two  things — revo- 
lutionized the  conception  of  God,  and  changed  an  abstract 
and  purely  metaphysical  idea  into  a  concrete  and  intensely 
ethical  person.  And  then  he  made  this  person  take  flesh  and 
become  a  visible  God  ;  but  with  the  most  singular  audacity 
he  restricted  this  incarnation  to  a  single  individual  whom  he 
identified  with  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  then  straightway  pro- 
ceeded to  tell  His  history.  And  he  told  it  simply,  directly,  as 
one  who  was  only  concerned  to  place  on  record  things  he  him- 
self had  seen.  It  is  significant  that  he  does  not  descend  from 
his  transcendental  to  his  historical  idea,  but,  conversely,  he 
rises  from  the  historical  to  the  transcendental.  It  is  because 
he  has  heard  with  his  ears,  seen  with  his  eyes,  handled  with 
his  hands  that  he  knows  the  Word  of  Life.1  The  thing  he  most 
fears  is  the  denial  that  Jesus  Christ  has  come  in  the  flesh.2 
The  personal  name  Jesus  is  the  one  he  most  loves  to  use  ; 
and  His  human  qualities — sympathy,  tenderness,  simplicity, 
1  i  John  i.  i.  2  I  John  ii.  18,  iv.  2,  3. 


456  JESUS    THE    ETERNAL    IDEAL   OF    MAN 

courtesy,  friendliness,  love — are  those  he  most  .emphasizes. 
He  likes  to  think  of  Him  as  "Jesus  Christ  the  righteous," 
sinless,  yet  our  example,  who  constrains  us  to  purify  our- 
selves even  as  He  is  pure.1  The  Fourth  is,  indeed,  the  most 
human  of  all  the  Gospels,  whose  hero  is  the  veritable  Son 
of  Man.2 

Yet  within  the  biography  John  skilfully  enshrined  his 
transcendental  idea.  The  Person  was  to  him  a  symbol  as 
well  as  a  fact,  His  history  was  at  once  allegorical  and  real. 
His  purpose  is  expressed  in  one  of  his  most  distinctive  terms, 
"true"  (a\77#<i/o?),  "true  light,"  "true  worshipper,"  "true 
Bread,"  "  He  that  sent  Me  is  true  "  ;  "  My  judgment  is  true," 
"  I  am  the  true  vine,"  "  the  only  true  God."  The  term  de- 
notes not  simply  the  true  as  opposed  to  the  false,  but  the 
real  as  opposed  to  the  apparent,  the  original  as  distinct  from 
the  derived,  the  genuine  in  contrast  to  the  counterfeit.  And 
these  antitheses  help  to  define  each  other,  and  to  make  the 
history  articulate  the  author's  thought.  Hence  he  sees  Jesus 
not  merely  as  a  man,  or  historical  person,  but  as  a  form 
under  which  the  eternal  ideal  has  been  so  realized  as  to  turn 
the  scenes  and  shapes  around  Him  into  shadows  that  now 
hide,  now  outline,  and  now  counterfeit  the  reality.  Thus  the 
supreme  need  of  the  created  order  is,  because  of  its  ignorance 
and  evil,  reconciliation  with  the  Creator  ;  and  this  reconcilia- 
tion is  conceived  as  coming  through  the  light  which  illumines, 
the  life  which  quickens,  the  love  which  saves.  And  these  are 
incarnate  in  Jesus.  The  Word  who  became  flesh  is  as  it 
were  the  tabernacle  of  a  universal  religion  ;  in  Him  God 
came  to  men,  and  men  met  God,  and  the  glory  which  they 
beheld  was  His  very  visible  presence.3  As  the  one  real  place 
of  meeting  He  is  the  ladder  which  connects  heaven  and  earth, 
keeping  open  God's  way  down  to  man,  man's  way  up  to  God.4 
He  is  the  genuine  temple,  which  men  will  seek  to  destroy, 

1   I  John  ii.  i,  iii.  3-7.  '  Ante,  p.  326^ 

3  i.  14.  «  i.  51. 


AND   TRUE    TABERNACLE    OF    RELIGION  457 

but  lie  will  reconstruct  ; 1  and  over  against  Him  stands  the 
local  temple,  wTiich  is  the  shadow  of  the  real  and  universal, 
good  if  taken  as  a  type,  but  bad  if  regarded  as  sufficient  in 
itself,  and  still  worse  if  conceived  as  a  final  and  abiding 
reality.  And  as  He  is  the  true  Temple,  He  is  also  the  true 
Sacrifice—"  the  Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sins  of 
the  wt>rld."2  Other  sacrifices  are  of  man's  providing  and 
offering  ;  He  alone  is  of  God.  And  so  from  Him  comes  life, 
through  Him  streams  light  ;  the  light  is  the  shadow  of  His 
truth,  the  life  the  fruit  of  His  death.3  And  He  who  is  at 
once  the  true  temple  and  the  true  sacrifice  is  also  the  true 
Priest,  the  Mediator  through  whom  the  "  righteous  Father  " 
reaches  the  world,  and  the  sinful  man  finds  his  way  to 
God.4  The  priests  around  Him  are,  like  their  temple  and 
sacrifices,  shadows — good  if  they  speak  of  another,  but  bad 
exceedingly  if  they  attempt  to  become  the  very  form  and 
being  of  the  Eternal,  and  seek  to  suppress  the  manifested 
God  as  if  He  were  the  semblance  and  they  the  supreme 
reality.  And  so  the  Fourth  Gospel  may  be  termed  a  tragic 
parable  narrated  of  God  and  His  universe  under  the  form  of 
an  actual  transaction  in  time  and  space.  There  has  come 
within  the  experience  of  man  the  most  transcendent  of  all 
mysteries  :  the  mind  of  God  is  translated  into  his  speech,  the 
life  of  God  assumes  his  shape  ;  and  in  a  history  which  is  all 
the  more  terribly  real  that  it  is  so  supreme!}'  ideal  we  see 
the  characters,  relations,  and  behaviours  of  God  and  man 
explicated  by  being  realized. 

*  ii.  19-21.  '  i.  29. 

1  iii.  1 6-2 1  ;  x.  7-18  ;  viii.  12.  *  xvii.  25. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   GENESIS   OF   THE   IDEA 

§  I.     The  Idea  and  the  Apostolic  Literature. 

THE  idea  of  the  person  of  Christ  may,  at  this  point,  be 
best  described  as  an  idea  generative  of  a  whole  litera- 
ture. Without  it  the  Apostles  would  have  remained  silent, 
mere  craftsmen  of  the  lake,  the  workshop  or  the  school ;  but 
from  it  there  came  an  impulse  which  drove  them  into  speech. 
And  the  speech  into  which  they  were  driven  was  an  attempt 
not  simply  to  portray  a  person  but  to  articulate  a  system  of 
religious  thought.  If  it  had  not  been  for  two  reasons  which, 
though  they  look  like  contraries,  are  yet  essentially  comple- 
mentary, its  religious  significance  and  its  want  of  literary  dis- 
tinction, the  New  Testament  would  have  seemed  to  us  the 
greatest  speculative  achievement  of  antiquity,  all  the  more 
extraordinary  that  its  authors  were  men  unversed  in  literature 
and  philosophy,  without  any  knowledge  of  the  problems  with 
which  human  thought  had  wrestled  or  any  of  the  argumenta- 
tive skill  which  comes  from  long  discipline  in  the  dialectical 
art.  By  a  sort  of  divination,  the  intuition  which  a  new  faith 
can  create  in  the  most  simple,  the  apostolic  men  saw  ideas 
which  the  most  gifted  minds  had  wished  to  see  but  had  not 
seen  : — The  unity  of  God  so  realized  in  a  universal  religion  as 
to  unite  all  the  families  of  men  ;  the  unity  of  man  in  blood 
and  spirit,  in  source  and  destiny,  the  reign  in  him  of  a  natural 
law  which  was  good,  and  of  inherited  tendencies  which  were 
evil ;  the  dream  of  a  development  which  conceived  the  race 


IDEAS  BEGOTTEN  BY  THE  INTERPRETATION  459 

as  a  magnified  individual  and  the  individual  as  an  epitomized 
race,  each  repeating  the  stages  of  growth  and  the  process  of 
education  marked  and  observed  by  the  other  ;  the  vision  of  a 
sovereignty  that  never  ceased  to  govern  in  nature  and  history, 
the  eternal  power  and  Godhead  of  the  Sovereign  being  clearly 
seen  through  the  things  that  are  made,  and  His  beneficence 
shown  in  never  selecting  men  and  nations  for  their  own  sakes 
alone,  but  only  as  agents  for  the  common  good  ;  the  idea  of  a 
humanity  of  the  Spirit,  a  household  of  the  elect,  created  by 
faith  in  the  Eternal  and  creating  obedience  to  His  ends ;  the 
conception  of  a  person  who  is  an  embodied  moral  law,  with 
this  to  distinguish  Him  from  all  ethical  standards  man  had  ever 
imagined,  that  He  not  only  humanized  duty  but  supplied 
the  motive  that  determined  its  fulfilment  ;  the  notion  of  this 
same  person,  who  is  the  sum  of  mankind  as  also  the  image  of 
God,  accomplishing  in  a  moment  of  colossal  existence  for  all 
mankind  what  the  election  of  grace  had  been  attempting  to  do 
for  each  successive  generation  ;  the  belief  that  the  God  who 
had  made  all  men  was  so  good  that  He  could  not  be  alienated 
by  evil  from  the  men  He  had  made,  but  suffered  on  account 
of  their  sin  and  saved  them  by  His  suffering  ;  the  conviction 
that  all  men  were  amenable  to  this  God,  that  they  must 
appear  before  Him,  see  His  awfulness,  hear  His  judgment, 
and  share  His  immortality,  so  that  His  eternity  embosomed 
and  enlarged  their  hour  of  mortal  being  and  gave  to  it  and  to 
them  a  dignity  almost  divine — these,  and  a  multitude  more 
of  cognate  ideas,  all  too  immense  and  too  novel  to  be  at  once 
appreciated,  or  even  understood,  entered  the  world  through 
the  men  who  attempted  to  interpret  for  us  the  person  of 
Christ  ;  and  because  of  this  attempted  interpretation,  the 
intellectual  system  they  created  was  not  so  much  the  child 
of  the  old  world  as  the  mother  of  the  new.  It  formed 
the  mind  which  disintegrated  the  ancient  order  and  organ- 
ized another  on  the  lines  and  in  the  forms  we  conceive 
as  specifically  modern.  The  source  to  which  the  ideas  that 


460  THE    IDEA    IN   THE    HANDS    OF   GREEKS 

distinguish  society  as  it  now  is  from  society  as  it  once  was 
can  be  traced  back,  is  a  source  which  has  an  indefeasible 
claim  to  eminence  in  reason  as  well  as  in  religion.  It  were 
but  an  idle  fancy  were  we  to  ask  what  would  have  happened 
had  this  idea  fallen  into  the  hands  of  Plato  and  Aristotle 
rather  than  into  those  of  John  and  Paul  ;  only  this  much  is 
certain,  it  would  have  done  even  more  for  them  and  their 
immortality  than  they  could  have  achieved  for  it.  If  Plato 
would  have  clothed  it  in  a  pomp  of  diction  more  congruous 
to  its  innate  grandeur,  if  Aristotle  would  have  analyzed  it 
with  infinite  subtlety  and  explained  it  with  incomparable 
lucidity,  it  on  its  side  would  have  enabled  the  one  to  delineate 
a  richer,  a  more  humane,  and  a  more  practicable  society  than 
he  has  imagined,  and  the  other  to  define  a  higher  good  and 
find  a  more  potent  and  palpable  ethical  motive  than  he  was 
able  to  discover.  But  the  absence  of  the  sage  and  the 
scholar  from  its  exponents  enables  us  the  better  to  see  that 
the  very  incompetence  of  the  men  it  inspired  to  do  justice  to 
the  idea  exalts  its  meaning  and  its  power.  The}'  by  their 
own  art  could  have  done  nothing  for  it ;  it  by  its  native 
majesty  did  everything  for  them. 

But  is  not  this  to  assume  the  very  issue  in  dispute, 
whether  they  were  or  were  not  equal  to  its  production  ?  If 
they  were,  there  is  no  question  :  if  they  were  not,  whence  did 
the  idea  come?  Whose  was  the  beneficent  hand  that 
started  it  on  its  creative  career  ? 

§    II.      I V he t her  Paul  was  the  Father  of  the  Idea 

I.  The  really  significant  fact  for  our  discussion  is  this : 
While  the  idea  receives  what  many  think  its  most  finished 
expression  in  the  latest  of  the  apostolical  writings,  it  yet 
appears  in  a  form  quite  as  transcendental  in  the  earliest  and 
most  authentic  of  them.  With  it  these  writings  are  con- 
cerned from  first  to  last ;  and  any  differences  in  detail,  in  the 
connexion  in  which  it  stands  or  the  purposes  to  which  it  is 


WHETHER   PAUL'S    INVENTION  461 

put,  and  the  tendencies  that  determine  these  things,  only 
accentuate  this  fundamental  agreement.  Now,  it  is  evident 
that  since  the  idea  is  articulated  in  our  oldest  authorities, 
which  are  the  great  Pauline  Epistles,  our  present  enquiry 
must  begin  with  their  author,  and  we  must  ask,  whether  there 
is  in  his  temper,  mind,  or  history  anything  that  could  be 
regarded  as  adequate  to  its  causation.  One  thing  is  indeed 
remarkable,  the  rational  sobriety  of  the  writer.  If  intellectual 
sanity  marked  the  miraculous  narratives  of  the  Gospels,  it 
distinguishes  in  a  still  higher  degree  the  Pauline  dialectic. 
It  may  be  impassioned,  here  and  there  too  sharply  anti- 
thetical in  style,  and  its  sequences  may  now  and  then  be  diffi- 
cult to  follow  ;  but  no  argument  could  be  more  rigorous,  no 
thinking  more  under  the  command  of  reason  and  logic  or 
more  free  from  the  extravagances  of  the  visionary,  or  the 
tendency  which  marks  the  fanatic,  to  confuse  the  imagined 
with  the  real,  the  ephemeral  with  the  permanent.  Now  it  is 
a  question  of  more  than  common  interest :  By  what  process 
did  Paul  come  to  conceive  and  formulate  his  idea  of  Christ? 
What  was  its  psychological  source  ?  and  in  what  terms  may 
we  describe  the  factors  of  its  origin  ?  The  subjective 
sources,  the  personal  roots,  the  biographical  and  historical 
causes  of  the  Pauline  theology,  are  matters  that  in  recent 
years  have  been  minutely  and  curiously  investigated,  (i.)  It 
has  been  argued,  on  the  basis  of  certain  narratives  and 
phrases  of  his  own,  that  he  was  a  man  of  nervous  tempera- 
ment, prone  to  see  visions  and  dream  dreams  ;  that  he  was  a 
subject  of  epilepsy,  which  was  his  thorn  in  the  flesh,  the 
messenger  of  Satan  that  buffeted  him.  What  he  thought  a 
sore  burden  and  sorrow  was  the  very  source  of  his  inspira- 
tion ;  whence  came,  on  the  one  hand,  his  vision  of  Christ,  his 
belief  in  Him,  in  His  death  for  sin,  in  His  resurrection  and 
session  at  the  right  hand  of  God  ;  and,  on  the  other,  his 
doctrine  of  the  flesh,  of  the  natural  man,  and  of  the  bodv  of 
death,  (ii.)  It  has  been  argued  that  his  personal  history  as 


462  THEORIES    AS    TO   PAULINE    AUTHORSHIP 

a  Pharisee  who  believed  in  the  law,  convinced  him  of  the 
weakness  of  the  law  he  believed  in.  It  imperiously  com- 
manded "  Thou  shalt  not  covet  " l — the  point  is  significant — 
but  did  nothing  for  the  suppression  of  covetousness  ;  and  the 
union  in  it  of  the  imperious  and  the  powerless  made  it  seem 
that  most  intolerable  of  all  dead  things — an  authority  that 
could  not  be  obeyed  yet  would  not  be  denied,  (iii.)  It  has 
been  argued,  on  the  one  side,  that  he  came  to  his  views 
suddenly  and  completely,  that  by  what  we  may  call  intuition 
and  he  called  revelation  2  he  saw  them  at  once  and  saw  them 
whole ;  and,  on  the  other,  that  he  grew  into  them,  taught  by 
experience,  by  controversy,  by  seeing  how  they  affected  the 
minds  of  men  in  many  lands,  by  the  way  in  which  he  him- 
self was  regarded,  and  his  preaching  \vas  handled  here  by 
Jews,  there  by  Apostles,  in  this  church  by  Judaizers,  and  in 
that  city  by  Greeks  and  Barbarians,  (iv.)  It  has  further  been 
argued  that  his  idea  of  Christ  expressed  the  belief  that  his 
new  life  was  God's  work  in  him,  effected  by  one  he  could 
not  conceive  as  less  than  God's  own  Son  ;  and  that  his 
theology  was  his  theory  as  to  his  own  conversion  objectified, 
articulated,  made  into  a  system  of  the  universe.  Now  these 
may  all  be  interesting  speculations,  but  what  impresses  one 
is  their  inadequacy  as  causes  to  produce  the  facts  they  would 
explain.  The  man  is  too  large  to  have  himself  and  his  beliefs 
cast  in  a  single  mould,  or  shaped  by  a  single  circumstance, 
or  resolved  by  a  disabling  constitutional  peculiarity  which 
may  explain  a  mood,  but  cannot  explain  a  history  and  a 
character  maintained  in  consistency  for  a  generation  amid 
distracting  labours  and  controversies.  Historical  and  literary 
criticism  has  need  to  sit  at  the  feet  of  science  and  learn  the 
lesson  that  nothing  can  be  accepted  either  as  the  sole  cause 
or  as  the  adequate  reason  for  an  event  which  cannot  explain 
either  it  or  its  effects. 

Paul,  then,  seems  too  wide  and  too  complex  a  person  to 
1  Rom.  vii.  7.  Gal.  i.  16. 


AND    SOURCES    OF    PAULINE    THEOLOGY  463 

be  reduced  to  the  terms  of  a  single  process  in  a  simple  and 
prosaic  psychology  ;  and  his  thought  is  as  manifold  as  his 
personality.  If  we  doubt  this,  we  have  but  to  review  the 
attempts  which  have  been  made  so  to  analyze  the  constitutive 
or  structural  elements  of  his  mind  and  theology  as  to  dis- 
cover their  sources,  (i.)  It  has  been  argued  that  he  remained 
as  he  was  born  and  bred  and  educated,  a  Jew,  especially  in 
his  attitude  to  the  Old  Testament ;  but  this  fails  to  account  for 
the  remarkable  fact  that,  while  he  used  it  in  argument  and 
as  evidence,  as  he  used  the  light  of  nature  in  reason  and  in 
conscience,  and  the  lessons  of  observation  and  experience, 
yet  he  did  not  find  in  it  the  cause  of  his  salvation  or  seek  in 
it  the  law  of  his  life,  (ii.)  The  theology  of  the  synagogue  has 
been  pressed  into  the  service  of  explaining  his  method,  his 
cardinal  terms,  his  forensic  ideas,  his  eschatology  and  angel- 
ology  ;  but  this  theory  is  urged  in  curious  oversight  of  the 
facts  that  the  synagogue  was  his  most  inveterate  enemy 
and  that  his  most  enthusiastic  disciples  were  those  least 
distinguished  by  the  Jewish  mind  or  learning.  (iii-)  The 
Apocalyptic  literature  has  been  made  to  contribute  to  the 
formation  of  his  thought  ;  but  its  contributions  have  been 
illustrative  of  single  points,  and  these  so  little  distinctively 
Pauline  as  to  be  mainly  in  epistles  of  doubtful  authenticity. 
(iv.)  It  is  remembered  that  he  was  a  son  of  the  Diaspora, 
and  the  influence  of  Hellenism  has  been  traced  in  his  mind. 
Philo  and  his  school  have  explained  his  love  of  allegory  and 
the  allegorical  interpretation  of  events  and  persons  in  Old 
Testament  history;1  but  this  touches  onlv  an  outer  fringe  of 
method  and  style,  not  the  substance  and  structure  <>t  his 
thought.  As  a  child  of  Israel  in  exile  he  must  have  known 
Greek  life,  and  in  a  measure  Greek  thought,  in  a  degree 
which  the  older  scholarship  —which  mainly  studied  his 
classical  quotations — utterly  failed  to  recognize;  and  so  we 
have  had  exhaustive  analvses  of  the  ideas  and  terms  and 
1  Cf.  (ial.  iv.  21-31  ;  i  Cor.  x.  4. 


464  PSYCHOLOGY,  EDUCATION,  AND  EXPERIENCE 

even  usages  he  may  have  owed  to  the  mysteries  ;  the  ethical 
impulse  and  teaching  that  may  have  come  from  the  Stoics  ; 
the  Hellenic  outlook  on  life  and  thought  which  may  have 
come  from  his  birth  and  upbringing  in  a  Greek  city ;  the 
ideas  of  law,  the  feeling  for  liberty,  the  sense  of  dignity 
that  may  have  come  to  him  from  his  Roman  citizenship  ; 
and  the  conception  of  a  universal  church  which  he  may  have 
acquired  through  his  experience  as  a  traveller  within  the 
Roman  Empire.  But  what  does  this  quest  after  sources, 
which  turn  out  to  be  only  outer  and  partial  influences,  mean  ? 
That  the  man  was  large  enough  to  have  found  room  in  his 
nature  for  all  they  could  bring  to  him  ;  but  that  he  was  too 
strongly  and  too  distinctly  himself  to  be  capable  of  ex- 
planation either  by  any  single  influence  in  particular  or  by 
all  the  suggested  influences  combined.  His  personality  has 
to  be  reckoned  with  before  their  action  can  be  understood. 

2.  As  to  the  whole  subject,  then,  we  may  say  this:  while  it 
is  not  easy  to  over-estimate  the  interest  of  these  questions, 
it  is  very  easy  to  over-emphasize  their  worth.  The  psycho- 
logical theory  which  helps  us  to  understand  the  tendencies 
which  predispose  him  to  believe  may  do  nothing  whatever  to 
explain  the  cause  and  ground  of  his  beliefs,  their  intrinsic 
rationality,  their  intellectual  coherence  and  cogency,  their 
value  to  man  and  their  function  in  his  history  ;  and  yet  it  is 
by  these  tests  that  they  must  be  finally  judged.  Looking, 
however,  at  what  we  may  call  its  natural  history,  we  may 
note  that  there  were  factors  which  made  for  the  belief  as  well 
as  against  it. 

(a)  There  are  those  which  concern  the  man  himself ;  and 
here  we  have  to  recognize  forces  which  were  distinctly 
hostile.  It  is  extraordinary  indeed  that  a  doctrine  of  such 
stupendous  novelty  arose  on  such  a  soil  in  so  short  a  period 
through  such  a  man  ;  and  so  tenaciously  rooted  itself  in  a 
mind  that  was  by  tradition,  inherited  prejudice,  education  or 
the  want  of  it,  so  little  qualified  for  its  inception  or  its  rccep- 


AS   FACTORS  OF   THE   PAULINE    DOCTRINE  465 

tion.  What  is  evident  is  this  :  the  man  who  elaborated  the 
doctrine  was  a  man  who  had  been  trained  in  Jewish  schools, 
educated  in  the  Jewish  Law,  and  so  bred  that  the  passion  of 
the  Jew  for  monotheism  and  against  any  intermixture  of  God 
with  man  was  woven  into  the  very  texture  of  his  thought 
and  speech.  He  had  therefore  no  natural  or  acquired  pre- 
disposition to  the  belief,  though,  indeed,  he  never  conceived 
that  by  embracing  the  new  he  had  been  false  to  the  old. 
On  the  contrary  he  believed  that  his  monotheistic  faith  was 
clarified,  enlarged,  and  preserved  more  effectually  by  his 
doctrine  as  to  Christ  than  by  any  form  it  had  yet  assumed 
or  any  agency  that  had  hitherto  worked  on  its  behalf.  Faith 
accomplished  that  which  the  law  had  been  intended  to  do  but 
had  failed  to  achieve — made  the  God  of  the  Jews  the  God 
of  the  whole  earth.  He  had  then  a  most  exalted  idea  of 
God,  and  a  most  intense  abhorrence  of  the  notion  that  there 
could  be  more  gods  than  one.  The  idea  of  Christ  prevailed 
only  because  he  conceived  that  through  Him  the  one  God 
was  made  the  only  God  of  universal  man. 

But  (/^)  there  were  certain  forces  in  his  mind  and  cir- 
cumstances that  were  prophetic  of  change.  Thus  his  very 
passion  for  the  law  of  his  God  tended  to  estrange  him  from 
the  law  of  his  people  ;  for  the  people's  law  demanded  an 
obedience  which  it  could  not  empower  the  will  to  render.  It 
asked  so  much  and  gave  so  little  that  it  filled  the  man  in  the 
very  degree  of  his  conscientiousness  with  doubt  and  despair. 
But  what  the  law  could  not  do  Jesus  as  the  Christ  had  clone  ; 
the  power  the  law  withheld  He  had  imparted.  And  it  was 
this  sense  of  the  power  which  lived  in  Him  that  found  expres- 
sion in  Paul's  theology;  and  it  was  an  expression  which  did 
not  proceed  from  ignorance  of  what  Jesus  had  been,  but  was 
rooted  in  the  fullest  knowledge  as  to  the  lite  lie  had  lived 
and  the  death  He  had  died.  Paul  says  that  he  had  known 
"Christ  after  the  flesh,"1  which  does  not  mean  that  he  had 

1  2  Cor.  v.  1 6. 

P.C.R.  ;-]O 


466  WHERE    PSYCHOLOGY    FAILS   AND  WHERE 

had  personal  intercourse  with  Jesus  while  He  lived,  but  it 
means  that  he  had  taken  the  same  external  or  ceremonial 
view  of  the  Messiah  as  the  Jews  had  done,  i.e.  he  had  con- 
ceived Him  as  a  sort  of  impersonated  ritual  rather  than  as 
the  Spirit  that  quickened.  Yet  though  he  does  not  say  that 
he  had  known  Jesus  in  the  flesh,  we  may  infer  that  he  had 
had  opportunities  for  such  knowledge.  He  must  have  been 
in  Jerusalem,  if  not  at  the  crucifixion,  yet  immediately  after 
it.  He  must  have  heard  in  the  school  of  Gamaliel  the  stories 
connected  with  the  betrayal  and  the  crucifixion.  He  must 
thus  have  come  to  know  Jesus,  not  through  the  fond  affection 
of  the  disciple  or  the  admiration  of  the  man  who  had  be- 
lieved and  loved,  but  through  the  criticism  of  the  man  that 
doubted,  the  prejudices  of  the  man  that  despised,  the  hatred 
of  the  man  who  had  persecuted.  And,  as  he  himself  tells1 
us,  he  had  acted  towards  the  Church  as  one  whose  know- 
ledge was  of  this  cruel  and  distorted  kind.  But  in  the  very 
struggle  to  obey  the  law  which  commanded  him  to  trouble 
and  waste  the  Church,  he  discovered  two  things,  (a)  its 
ethical  or  spiritual  impotence,  i.e.  its  power  to  forbid  but  its 
inability  to  inspire  with  the  spirit  that  obeyed  ;  and  (/S)  the 
potency  of  Jesus,  as  shown  in  the  men  he  persecuted,  to 
command  obedience  and  to  inspire  with  the  love  that  was 
willing  for  His  sake  to  endure  the  loss  of  all  things  and 
even  of  life  itself.  And  this  discovery  involved  a  change  of 
relation  to  Jesus,  and  therefore  a  changed  attitude  to  the 
law.  He  saw  that  Jesus  had  introduced  a  new  kind  of 
obedience,  a  new  ideal  of  righteousness,  a  new  mode  of  find- 
ing acceptance  with  God,  and  that  He  had,  by  redeeming 
man  from  the  curse  of  the  law,  achieved  his  salvation. 

This  may  represent  in  an  approximate  degree  the  psycho- 
logical process  by  which  Paul  came  to  his  view  as  to  Jesus 
being  the  Christ.  As  such  it  may  have  real  biographical 
value,  and  even  much  critical  significance ;  but  it  fails  to 

1  Gal.  i.  13,  14. 


IT   SUCCEEDS;    THE    MYTHICAL   THEORY  467 

explain  the  only  four  things  worth  explaining ;  viz.,  (i.)  how 
he  came  to  conceive  Jesus  not  simply  as  the  Messiah,  but  as 
the  Son  of  God,  not  officially  or  figuratively,  but  essentially, 
i.e.  as  Himself  divine  ;  (ii.)  how  it  happened  that  a  theory 
which  had  so  arisen  could  so  profoundly  modify  the  man's 
whole  conception  of  the  universe,  and  take  such  possession 
of  his  intellectual  nature  ;  (iii.)  how  it  could  create  the  re- 
ligion that  has  been  the  most  important  factor  in  the  higher 
history  and  better  life  of  the  race  ;  and  (iv.)  how  it  was  that 
the  idea  was  not  peculiar  to  Paul  but  common  to  the  apos- 
tolical society  as  a  whole,  including  those  men  from  whom  he 
is  conceived  to  have  differed  so  widely  and  so  strenuously. 

§   III.      WJietlier  the  Idea  is  the  Product  of  a  Mythical 

Process 

While,  then,  it  may  be  needful  to  recognize  how  much  the 
experience  and  the  peculiar  psychology  of  Paul  helped  to 
create  his  attitude  of  reverence  to  the  person  of  Jesus,  yet 
we  must  also  recognize  how  little  they  can  explain  either  the 
genesis  or  the  form  of  his  idea.  But  there  is  an  older  and 
more  radical  hypothesis  as  to  its  rise,  what  used  to  be 
called  the  mythical  theory.  The  change  from  mythology 
to  psychology  is  significant  of  the  new  historical  method  ;  but 
the  change  is  more  formal  than  real.  The  one  attempts  to 
get  at  the  subjective  cause  of  what  the  other  studied  as  a 
more  or  less  objective  process.  Historical  psychology  is  an 
analysis  of  the  personal  source,  whether  morbid  or  normal, 
of  the  ideas  or  beliefs  which,  when  woven  into  a  system  or  a 
history,  constitute  a  mythology. 

I.  The  theory  of  a  mythical  and  imaginative  origin  for  the 
idea  may  be  stated  thus  :  The  death  ol  Jesus  was  a  complete 
surprise  and  disillusionment  to  His  disciples.  They  had  be- 
lieved Him  to  be  the  victorious  and  immortal  Messiah  ;  they 
found  Him  to  be  a  frail  and  mortal  man;  and  in  the  first 


468  THE    PROCESS    TRANSFIGURES 

shock  of  the  discovery  they  forsook  Him  and  fled  from  their 
own  past  beliefs.  But  these  beliefs  were  not  so  easily 
renounced ;  they  had  begotten  hopes  too  precious  to  be 
abandoned  even  at  the  bidding  of  fate  ;  they  were  endeared 
by  affections  too  tender  to  die  in  the  presence  of  disaster. 
And  so  while  experience  tempted  the  disciples  to  acquies- 
cence in  the  accomplished,  which  was  but  the  end  that  Nature 
has  in  store  for  all,  the  imagination  and  the  heart  pleaded 
for  another  and  more  splendid  issue.  If  the  death  was  not  to 
extinguish  Jesus,  He  must  be  made  to  transfigure  it,  and 
change  it  into  something  quite  other  than  the  lot  common  to 
mortal  men.  This  was  the  supreme  achievement  and  victory 
of  faith,  which  could  not  cease  to  regard  Jesus  as  the  Messiah, 
but  could  do  a  sublimer  thing — invest  Him  and  His  death 
with  eternal  significance.  The  vision  that  created  the  belief 
in  the  resurrection  made  this  transfiguration  possible  ;  yet  the 
one  was  a  harder  and  slower  process  than  the  other.  All 
at  once,  as  is  the  way  of  visions,  the  resurrection  became  a 
credited  fact,  which  the  visionaries  on  every  possible  occasion 
affirmed  that  they  themselves  had  witnessed  ;  but  the  death 
had  come  in  an  inexplicable,  accidental,  violent  mode.  So 
the  one  was  conceived  as  God's  action,  but  the  other  as 
man's.  God  had  raised  Him  from  the  dead,  but  it  was 
by  wicked  hands  that  He  had  been  "  taken,  crucified,  and 
slain."  :  The  Jews  had  "  killed  the  Prince  of  Life,"  demand- 
ing His  death  even  when  Pilate  "  was  determined  to  let  Him 
go."2  But  this  crude  theory  could  not  long  endure,  for  if 
"  wicked  hands "  could  prevail  once,  why  not  again  and 
finally?  So  a  second  stage  is  marked  by  the  acceptance  of 
the  customary  Jewish  explanation  of  the  detested  inevitable 
— it  was  the  Will  of  God.  While  Herod  and  Pontius  Pilate, 
the  people  of  Rome  and  of  Israel  had  appeared  to  act, 
the  real  Actor  had  been  God  ;  they  only  did  what  the  hand 
and  counsel  of  God  had  determined  before  to  be  done.3 
1  Acts  i.  23.  *  Ib.  iii.  13-15.  *  Ib.  iv.  27,  28. 


THE   PERSON    AND    THE    DEATH         469 

But  this  position  had  too  little  reason  in  it  to  satisfy  the 
imaginative  intellect  of  the  young  society.  It  read  with  new 
eyes  the  Old  Testament,  found  that  Isaiah's  servant  of  God 
was  a  sufferer  for  human  sin,  and  all  his  attributes  and  experi- 
ences were  forthwith  ascribed  to  Jesus.1  As  this  sufferer  was 
"  led  like  a  lamb  to  the  slaughter,"  so  Jesus  became  "  the  Lamb 
of  God,"  with  all  the  sacrificial  ideas  of  Judaism  aggregated 
round  His  person  and  His  death.  The  process  once  begun, 
needed  for  its  completion  only  a  constructive  genius,  and 
instead  of  one  such,  three  soon  appeared  :  Paul,  who  argued 
that  Jesus  as  the  crucified  Christ  was  both  the  fulfilment  and 
the  abolition  of  the  law  ;  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  who  made  Jesus  and  His  sufferings  the  antitype 
which  had  their  type  in  the  elaborate  ritual  and  worship  of  the 
old  economy  ;  and  John,  who  found  in  the  person,  history, 
and  death  of  our  Lord  the  means  by  which  the  world  was 
illumined  and  redeemed.  And  so  by  a  perfectly  natural,  yet 
purely  mythical  and  imaginative  process,  His  death  was 
transfigured  from  the  last  calamity  of  a  blameless  life  to  the 
act  of  grace  by  which  God  saved  the  world. 

But  this  theory,  however  ingenious  and  plausible,  has  three 
great  defects  :  it  lacks  proof,  it  is  intrinsically  improbable, 
and  it  fails  to  explain  the  facts,  (i.)  Its  proofs  are  drawn  from 
sources  which  its  advocates  have  in  other  connexions,  and  for 
what  they  deemed  adequate  reasons,  discredited.  It  is  not 
open  to  the  same  criticism  to  prove  by  analysis  at  one  time 
the  earlv  speeches  in  the  Acts  to  be  late  compositions,  and  at 
another  to  use  them  as  authentic  evidence  for  the  oldest 
Christian  beliefs.  And  here  the  most  primitive  tradition  is 
specially  explicit.  When  Paul  states  that  it  pleased  God  to 
reveal  His  Son  in  me,'"'  and  that  he  preached  "first  of  all  that 
which  also  I  received,  how  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins, 
according  to  the  Scriptures,"3  he  can  only  mean  that  at  the 
moment  of  his  conversion  the  belief  had  been  not  simply 

1  Acts  viii.  30-35.  *  Gal.  i.  16.  '  I  Cor.  xv.  3. 


470  MYTHOLOGY   MUST   EXPLAIN 

formulated,  but  elaborated  into  a  system  in  harmony  with  the 
Old  Testament,  (ii.)  As  to  the  intrinsic  improbabilities,  we 
have  to  consider  both  the  men  and  the  theory  ;  it  was  a 
belief  of  stupendous  originality  ;  they  were  persons  of  no 
intellectual  attainments  and  small  inventive  faculty.  So  far 
as  the  Gospels  enable  us-  to  judge,  they  were  curiously 
deficient  in  imagination,  and  of  timid  understanding.  They 
were  remarkable  for  their  inability  to  draw  obvious  con- 
clusions, to  transcend  the  commonplace,  and  comprehend 
the  unfamiliar,  or  find  a  rational  reason  for  the  extraordinary. 
Such  men  might  dream  dreams  and  see  visions,  but  to  invent 
an  absolutely  novel  intellectual  conception  which  was  to 
change  man's  view  of  all  things  Divine  and  human,  was  surely 
a  feat  beyond  them,  (iii.)  And  the  improbabilities  involve  the 
inadequacy  of  the  theory  ;  it  makes  Christ,  with  all  He  has 
accomplished,  not  simply  the  creation  of  accident,  but  it  also 
turns  the  beliefs  and  the  religion  which  have  so  governed  the 
course  of  history  into  phantoms  of  the  rude  and  sensuous 
imagination. 

2.  But  the  mythical  theory  as  here  applied  offends  against 
certain  of  the  laws  which  govern  human  development.  It  will 
be  enough  if  three  of  these  be  here  noticed. 

(a)  The  concrete  and  historical,  or  the  imaginative  and  the 
mythical  stage  of  thought,  in  both  the  personal  and  the  col- 
lective life,  precedes  the  abstract  and  the  speculative,  or  the 
dialectical  and  logical.  In  every  society,  as  in  every  person, 
the  order  or  succession  of  mental  states  is  this  :  the  imagina- 
ation  which  loves  the  personal  is  active  and  creative  earlier 
than  the  reason  which  loves  the  metaphysical.  When  mind 
is  fresh  and  passion  strong  and  the  light  of  love  looks 
through  the  eyes  upon  wonders  the  sobered  understanding 
can  never  see,  the  mythical  fancy  has  its  creative  hour,  and 
weaves  for  its  hero  a  history  which  corresponds  to  its  own 
mood  rather  than  to  his  achievements.  But  when  ex- 
perience has  subdued  emotion  and  damped  the  heats  of 


NOT    HISTORY    BUT   THOUGHT  471 

youth,  thought  awakens,  asks  for  reasons,  and  begins  to 
speculate  about  the  forms  and  shadows  which  looked  so 
beautiful  and  so  substantial  in  the  vision  the  fancy  made. 
Criticism,  in  its  impulsive  and  wayward  youth,  learned  this 
law  from  philosophy,  and,  assuming  the  Gospels  to  be  the 
oldest  documents,  analyzed  them  as  works  of  the  mythical 
imagination,  which  had,  out  of  a  few  mean  facts,  unconsciously 
created  all  their  pomp  of  miracle  and  mystery.  But  it  was 
soon  discovered  that  the  oldest  Christian  literature  was  not 
history  but  philosophy,—- speculation  as  to  Christ,  not  narrative 
concerning  Jesus.  While  miracles,  as  single  acts,  have  in  this 
dialectical  literature,  if  we  may  so  name  it,  no  place,  yet  in 
their  stead,  filling  the  whole  space,  stands  a  person  so  mira- 
culous that  in  His  presence  the  most  miraculous  narratives 
are  subdued  to  tame  prose.  There  wras  no  doubt  imagination 
in  the  dialectic,  for  simply  from  the  point  of  view  of  its 
marvellous  vision  backward  into  history,  forward  into  the 
future  with  its  infinite  possibilities  of  good,  upward  into  the 
mysteries  we  denote  by  the  term  Godhead  or  God,  and  down- 
ward into  the  nature  which  we  name  man, — so  compounded 
of  the  divine  and  the  demoniac,  yet  so  continually  riven 
asunder  by  their  strife — the  speculative  structure  we  owe  to 
Paul  stands  for  its  imaginative  qualities  foremost  among  the 
dialectical  creations  of  the  world.  But  this  only  adds  to 
the  significance  of  the  fact  here  emphasized  :  brief  as  is  the 
period  which  divided  the  oldest  Pauline  Epistles  from  the 
death  of  Jesus,  there  has  yet  grown  up  in  the  interval  not  a 
mythological  but  an  intellectual  system, — the  conception  of 
a  Person  who  is  at  once  the  interpreter  of  God  and  the  in- 
terpretation of  man,  the  centre  of  the  finely  articulated 
svstem  which  has  drawn  into  its  diamond  network  the  whole 
order  of  history  and  all  the  forces  which  work  for  or  against 
the  good  which  is  its  end.  And  this  conception  cannot  be 
explained  as  due  to  a  blind  mythical  impulse  acted  on  by  a 
reminiscent  and  regretful  love,  which  sought  compensation 


472  MYTHOLOGY   AS    UNCONSCIOUS    POETRY 

for  the  loss  of  the  loved  by  the  eminence  of  its  imaginative 
creations  ;  for  the  man  who  formulates  and  articulates  it  did 
not  know  Jesus,  and  so  was  without  the  ardour  of  personal 
love  and  the  sense  of  personal  loss. 

(/3)  A  second  law  regulative  of  the  formation  and  inter- 
pretation of  mythical  material  is  this  :  Since  speculation  is 
later  than  history,  it  is  the  historical  incident  or  event  that  it 
most  loves  to  construe.  Mythology  is  the  unconscious  poetry 
of  nature  and  history  ;  while  philosophy  is  the  attempt  of  the 
conscious  reason  to  translate  the  products  of  the  unconscious 
imagination  into  rational  theory.  But  what  is  peculiar  in  this 
case  is  that  the  dialectical  explication  is  concerned  with  the 
Person  and  not  with  the  history.  It  would  not  have  been 
so  extraordinary  if  the  dialectical  construction  had  begun 
after  the  lapse  of  a  century  or  more,  i.e.,  when  His  figure 
had  grown  nebulous  and  the  exaggerative  fancy  had  played 
its  wrizard  tricks  with  His  memory.  Without  the  exuberant 
mythology  which  hides  Buddha  so  completely  from  the  eye 
of  the  historical  inquirer,  the  Buddhist  schools  would  have 
been  deprived  of  the  material  out  of  which  they  have  woven 
their  wonderful  metaphysical  dreams.  Without  the  Persian 
mind  and  imagination,  looking  through  a  medium  of  glori- 
fying legend  at  the  figure  which  had  moved  across  the 
Arabian  desert  some  generations  before,  we  should  never 
have  had  those  mystic  speculations  as  to  the  prophet,  his 
word  and  family  and  heirs,  which  go  so  far  to  redeem  Islam 
from  bondage  to  the  letter  that  killeth.  Not  till  men  had 
ceased  to  believe  that  Greek  mythology  was  true,  or  that 
the  Greek  gods  could  be  what  it  said  they  were,  did  they 
attempt  its  speculative  interpretation  ;  and  ask,  whether  it 
was  misunderstood  history  or  hidden  wisdom,  natural  science 
or  moral  truth  disguised  in  allegory.  But  here,  before  the 
myth  has  had  time  to  rise,  or  the  legend  to  become  current, 
or  the  imagination  to  transmute  base  metal  into  fine  gold, 
the  speculative  change  has  been  not  simply  begun  but  ac- 


SPEAKS    A   LIVING    LANGUAGE  473 

complished.  In  other  words,  it  is  not  Jesus  in  His  environ- 
ment of  miracle  who  is  interpreted,  but  it  is  the  Person  in 
His  specially  historical  and  religious,  ethical  and  intellectual, 
significance.  The  idea  seeks  to  represent  and  explicate 
Himself,  not  His  acts  and  the  incidents  of  His  career. 

(7)  The  third  law  we  wish  to  note  is  this  :  between  the 
speculative  construction  and  the  soil  on  which  it  grows 
there  must  be  close  and  intimate  agreement.  But  in  this 
case  the  remarkable  thing  is  that  the  plant  seems  so  totally 
alien  to  the  soil  on  which  it  sprouted  and  grew.  While 
Paul  is  an  intensely  Jewish  thinker,  and  uses  forms  of 
thought,  figures  of  speech,  and  methods  of  interpretation 
which  he  must  have  learned  in  the  Jewish  schools,  the  idea 
which  he  elaborates  is  the  very  contradiction  of  what  he  must 
there  have  been  trained  to  believe.  Our  first  impulse,  when  we 
come  to  understand  the  doctrine  of  the  Person,  is  to  seek 
for  hints  or  intimations  of  it  in  the  Old  Testament,  and 
these  have  been,  both  by  apologetic  and  cxegetical  theology, 
most  deftly  and  exhaustively  handled.  But  the  idea  has 
no  real  parallel  in  the  Jewish  Scriptures,  for  they  may  be 
said  never  to  have  transcended  the  notion  that  God  and  man 
formed  an  absolute  antithesis.  The  affinities  of  the  idea 
appear  rather  to  be  with  Greek  religion.  Indeed,  were  we 
writing  of  a  process  which  that  religion  recognizes,  we  might 
describe  it  as  one  of  apotheosis.  But  the  term  is  inapplic- 
able here  for  two  reasons  : 

(i.)  The  process  happens  under  a  religion  which  knew 
nothing  of  gods  who  begot  men  or  men  who  became  gods.  It 
was  a  monotheism,  and  the  man  who  first  shows  us  the  com- 
pleted process  not  only  never  at  any  moment  abandoned  in 
the  smallest  degree  this  faith,  but  he  became  by  the  change 
he  effected  in  its  terms  its  most  victorious  expositor  and 
missionary.  Indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts 
in  this  most  curious  history — and  were  we  dealing  with  an 
abstract  question  we  should  call  the  position  an  incredible 


474    IDEA    NOT   A    DEIFICATORY    PROCESS 

paradox — that  the  idea  of  the  Son  of  God  who  was  equal 
with  God,  though  it  seemed  most  seriously  to  threaten  the 
divine  unity,  has  yet  been  the  supreme  means  of  its  conserva- 
tion. And  this  relation  to  the  idea  of  one  God  makes  the 
Christian  incarnation  a  belief  at  once  singular  and  original. 
In  Greece  apotheosis  meant  for  both  gods  and  men  such  a 
community  of  origin  and  such  a  communicability  of  nature 
and  status,  that  the  process  of  descent  from  the  gods  or 
ascent  into  their  society  was  in  the  strictest  sense  natural  and 
normal.  But  in  Israel  eternity  was  the  attribute  of  God  and 
mortality  of  man,  and  so,  because  of  the  distinction  in  their 
natures,  Deity  could  not  be  communicated  to  man  or 
humanity  to  God.  And  as  a  curious  but  instructive  fact  this 
difference  was  not  so  much  reduced  as  emphasized  by  the 
place  accorded  to  Christ. 

(ii.)  He  is  not  conceived  as  the  subject  of  a  deificatory 
process— indeed,  both  term  and  idea  would  have  been  ab- 
horrent to  the  apostolic  writers,  who  thought  that  God  was  as 
incapable  of  change  as  of  any  beginning  of  being.  Hence 
they  would  not  have  described  as  divine  any  one  they  did 
not  believe  to  be  essentially  God ;  and  so  they  never  repre- 
sent Christ  as  attaining  Deity  or  achieving  a  rank  which  He 
had  not  known  before.  This  makes  their  idea  a  contrast 
rather  than  a  parallel  to  those  transmutations  of  gods  into 
men  and  men  into  gods  so  common  in  the  Greek,  the  Latin, 
and  the  Hindu  mythologies. 

§   IV.      TJie  Historical  Source  of  the  Idea 

I.  The  idea  seems  thus  to  be  too  speculative  and  too 
original  to  be  explained  by  a  theory  which  places  the  imagin- 
ation before  the  reason,  postulates  as  already  existing  the 
forms  to  be  used,  and  requires  for  their  growth  into  organic 
unity  a  congenial  soil  and  a  suitable  environment.  How, 
then,  are  we  to  conceive  the  genesis  of  this  common  and 


ITS    SOURCE    THE    MIND   OF   CHRIST      475 

creative  idea  of  the  Xew  Testament,  this  constitutive  and 
regulative  idea  of  the  Church?  Its  source  must  have  been 
one  acknowledged  and  revered  by  all  tendencies  and  all 
parties,  for  only  so  can  their  agreement  in  this  and  their 
difference  in  other  respects  be  understood.  And  this  source 
could  be  but  one:  the  mind  of  Christ.  His  teaching  can 
explain  the  rise,  the  forms,  and  the  contents  of  the  Apostolic 
literature,  but  this  literature  could  never  explain  ho\v  His 
teaching  came  to  be.  Postulate  His  mind,  and  we  may 
derive  from  it  the  Apostolic  thought ;  but  postulate  this 
thought,  and  we  could  never  deduce  from  it  His  mind  and 
history.  In  other  words,  He  is  the  historical  antecedent  and 
the  logical  premiss  of  the  Epistles,  and  it  is  open  to  no 
intellectual  strategy  to  invert  or  change  their  relations.  In 
His  teaching  lie  principles  they  develop,  but  also  elements 
they  miss  or  misconceive.  Yet  it  is  exactly  as  regards  His 
person  that  the  connexion  is  most  close  and  consistent,  the 
development  most  precise  and  logical.  He  speaks  of  Him- 
self as  the  Son  who  alone  knows  and  alone  can  reveal  the 
Father;  and  to  this  idea  Paul  traces  His  conversion,  in  it 
Hebrews  finds  the  constitutive  truth  of  the  Christian  religion,1 
Peter  the  quality  by  which  the  Christian  Deity  may  best  be 
defined,-  the  Apocalypse  the  image  that  makes  the  Head 
of  the  Church  most  sovereign;1  and  John  the  name  he  most 
loves  to  use.1  Jesus  speaks  of  the  Messiah  as  Son  of  David,5 
so  does  Paul.6  "The  Son  of  Man"  of  the  Gospels  appears 
nowhere  in  the  Epistles,  but  its  interpretative  equivalents, 
"the  second  Adam"  and  "the  second  man,"  are  determinative 
of  the  Pauline  thought.7  The  best  commentary  on  the 
claim  that  lie  had  come  to  fulfil  the  law  and  the  prophets 
is  Hebrews;  the  most  impressive  representations  of  His 
functions  as  Redeemer  and  judge  are  to  be  found  in  the 

1  i.  i.  8  i.  2,  3.  3  ii.  iS. 

4   I  John  i.  3  ;   iv.  9,  14,  15.  5   Mark  xii.  35-37. 

6  Rom.  i.  3.  7    I  Cor.  xv.  45-47. 


476  THE    INTERPRETATION    OF   THE    PERSON 

Apocalypse.  It  has  been  argued  that  there  are  differences 
between  His  and  the  Apostolic  idea ;  of  course  there  are, 
but  these  are  notes  more  of  continuity  and  independence 
than  of  contradiction  and  isolation.  Wendt  argues1  that 
the  conception  of  the  personal  and  heavenly  pre-existence 
distinguishes  the  Pauline  idea  from  Christ's  ;  and  Gloatz2  well 
replies  to  him  that  this  can  be  maintained  only  by  one  who 
excludes  all  reference  to  the  discourses  in  John  and  places 
the  most  prosaic  interpretation  on  some  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic Synoptic  sayings.  If,  then,  we  view  the  idea  as  the 
creation  of  Jesus  Himself,  the  expression  of  His  own  con- 
sciousness touching  His  own  being,  the  Apostolic  literature, 
thought  and  life  may  be  explained  ;  but  if  we  seek  for  it 
some  alien  and  accidental  source,  bewilderment — literary, 
historical  and  biographical — will  be  the  sure  result. 

2.  We  have  yet  to  show  how  the  idea  as  to  the  Person  of 
Christ  created  the  Christian  religion.  It  is  enough  that  we 
repeat  here,  that  that  religion  is  not  built  upon  faith  in 
Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but  upon  the  belief  that  He  was  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God.  Without  this  belief  the 
religion  could  have  had  no  existence  ;  the  moment  it  lived 
the  religion  began  to  be.  And  the  process  of^  interpreta- 
tion was  a  creative  process ;  every  stage  in  the  evolution 
of  the  thought  marked  a  stage  -  in  the  realization  of  the 
religion.  In  the  synoptic  Gospels,  we  have  what  may  be 
termed  the  personal  and  subjective  religion  of  Jesus,  i.e.  the 
modes  under  which  He  conceived  His  relation  to  God  and 
fulfilled  His  duties  towards  man  ;  but  had  they  stood  alone, 
we  should  have  had  only  one  picture  the  more  of  the  ideal 
man,  a  Being  to  admire  and  imitate,  not  to  worship  and 
obey.  In  the  apostolical  Epistles  the  Person  is  interpreted 
in  relation  to  the  religion,  and  as  the  interpretation  proceeds 

1  Die  Lehre  des  Paulus  verglichen  mit  der  Lehre  Jesu,  p.  45. 

2  '•  Zur  Vergleichung  der  Lehre  des  Paulus  mit  der  Jesu."     Stud.  u. 
Krit.  1895,  PP-  77s  ancl  792-794- 


IS    THE    CREATION    OF   THE    RELIGION     477 

the  religion  becomes  more  clearly  defined,  distinct  in  quality, 
real  in  character,  absolute  in  authority.  We  see  it  become, 
first,  different  from  Judaism,  next  independent  of  it,  then  ab- 
sorbent of  all  that  was  permanent  in  it  as  well  as  in  other 
religions,  and,  finally,  when  Christ  is  conceived  in  His  divine 
dignity  and  pre-eminence,  the  religion  appears  as  the  alone 
true,  as  universal  in  its  unity  as  the  one  God  in  His  sole 
sovereignty.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel  a  final  step  is  taken  :  this 
interpreted  Person  is  made  the  key  at  once  to  the  history  of 
Jesus  and  to  the  purposes  and  the  ends  of  God  alike  in  crea- 
tion and  in  redemption.  By  this  means  what  was  actual  and 
personal  is  wedded  to  what  is  ideal  and  universal,  and  each 
is  seen  to  have  been  a  necessary  factor  of  the  concrete  result. 
Without  the  historical  Person  the  ideal  would  never  have  ex- 
isted ;  but  without  the  ideal  the  historical  would  never  have 
been  the  source  of  a  universal  religion.  The  historical  Person 
may  be  described  as  the  primordial  and  creative  or  parent 
form.  He  defined  the  religion  as  essentially  ethical,  by  exhibit- 
ing the  type  of  man  and  character  it  was  intended  to  realize. 
Men  were  to  be  as  He  was — sons  of  God  ;  as  gracious  and 
beneficent,  as  blameless  and  gentle,  as  faithful  and  brotherly 
towards  men ;  and  as  reverent  and  lowly,  as  pure  and 
obedient,  as  sinless  and  holy,  towards  God.  And  the  religion 
was  to  live  and  grow  in  the  manner  He  instituted — by  making 
disciples,  by  creating,  through  the  methods  of  fellowship  and 
friendship,  out  of  the  evil  and  the  neglected,  the  publicans  and 
the  sinners,  a  society  of  the  like-minded— men  who  loved  God 
supremely,  and  their  neighbours  as  themselves.  Without 
the  historical  Person  we  should  never  have  known  what  the 
religion  ought  to  be,  the  sort  of  man  it  conceived  as  accept- 
able to  God,  the  kind  of  worship  it  wished  to  cultivate,  the 
mode  in  which  it  proposed  to  change  the  old  order,  and  the 
new  society  it  desired  to  form.  He  thus,  as  it  were,  deter- 
mined the  quality  and  inner  essence  of  His  religion,  fixing  for 
ever  its  special  character  and  peculiar  type.  But  if  the  his- 


478     INCARNATION    EPITOME    AND   MIRROR 

torical  Person  had  stood  alone,  i.e.  if  He  had  been  conceived 
and  regarded  as  a  common  man,  though  a  man  of  rare  dignity 
and  a  teacher  of  pre-eminent  power,  we  might  have  had  a 
school,  a  sect,  or  a  philosophy,  but  we  could  not  have  had  a 
religion.  What  made  the  religion  was  the  significance  His 
Person  had  for  thought,  the  way  in  which  it  lived  to  faith,  the 
mode  in  which  it  interpreted  to  reason  God  and  the  universe, 
man  and  history.  It  was  this  that  saved  the  disciples  from 
becoming  the  sect  of  the  Nazarenes,  and  made  them  into  the 
Catholic  Church.  It  is  by  virtue  of  this  idea  that  we  have  the 
Christian  religion,  and  that  it  has  lived  and  reigned  from  the 
moment  of  its  birth  till  now. 

3.  But  this  analysis  of  the  historical  relations  existing  between 
the  idea  of  Christ's  person  and  the  creation  of  the  Christian 
religion  has  introduced  us  to  a  region  at  once  of  speculation 
and  criticism.  It  is  not  enough  to  see  that  in  the  period  of 
formation  every  change  in  the  idea  of  the  Person  was  attended 
by  a  parallel  modification  or  transformation  in  the  religion  ;  it 
is  necessary  that  we  inquire  whether  the  idea  be  in  itself  essen- 
tial to  religion,  whether  it  has  behaved  in  it  like  an  arbitrary 
creation  of  religious  emotion,  or  like  a  doctrine  that  is  all  the 
more  rational  to  human  thought  that  it  so  speaks  concerning 
the  mysteries  of  God.  We  confess,  indeed,  that  the  person  of 
Christ  is  a  stupendous  miracle,  in  the  proper  sense  the  sole 
miracle  of  time.  In  it  the  mystery  of  being  is  epitomized  and 
externalized.  For  there  is  no  problem  raised  by  the  incarna- 
tion which  is  not  raised  in  an  acuter  and  less  soluble  form 
by  creation,  whether  considered  as  an  event  in  time  or  as  an 
existence  in  space.  If  creation  be  an  event  or  process,  it  is 
something  which  had  a  beginning,  and  in  ho\vever  remote  a 
past  the  beginning  may  be  placed,  yet  behind  it  stands  a 
silent  eternity  ;  and  though  reason  may  ask  for  ever  what  was 
before  the  creative  process  began,  what  caused  it  to  begin,  and 
when  was  the  beginning,  it  will  for  ever  ask  in  vain.  Again, 
if  creation  be  conceived  as  being  in  space,  then  it  is  from  its 


OF    ALL   THE    MYSTERIES    OF    BEING      479 

very  nature  existence  within  bounds  ;  but  how  can  the  same 
space  hold  at  once  bounded  and  boundless  Being  ?  How 
can  an}-  Being  be  boundless  if  once  He  be  confronted  by  the 
bounded?  Can  there  be  any  room  in  a  universe  that  knows 
the  finite  for  the  Infinite  ?  Does  not  limited  existence,  so  far 
forth  as  real,  cancel  the  very  possibility  of  the  unlimited?  In 
short,  there  is  no  problem  raised  by  the  idea  of  God  manifest 
in  the  flesh  as  to  the  relation  of  the  divine  nature  to  the 
human  in  the  unity  of  one  person,  or  as  to  the  historical 
origin  of  such  a  relation,  i.e.  its  beginning  in  time  ;  or  as  to 
the  action  of  the  limited  manhood  on  the  illimitable  Godhood, 
which  is  not  equally  raised  by  the  inter-relations  of  God  and 
nature.  For  in  a  perfectly  real  sense  creation  is  incarnation  ; 
nature  is  the  body  of  the  infinite  Spirit,  the  organism  which 
the  divine  thought  has  articulated  and  filled  with  the  breath 
of  life.  But  while  the  problems  are  analogous,  the  fact  rs 
which  promise  solution  are  more  potent  in  the  case  of  the 
incarnation  than  of  creation.  For  in  nature  the  idea  of  God 
demands  for  its  expression  no  more  than  physical  and  logical 
categories,  but  in  Christ  the  categories  become  rational, 
ethical,  emotional,  i.e.  they  involve  personal  qualities  and  rela- 
tions rather  than  mere  cosmical  modes  and  energies.  And 
so,  by  investing  God  with  a  higher  degree  of  reality  and 
higher  qualities  of  being,  it  makes  all  His  attributes  and  rela- 
tions more  actual,  all  His  actions  and  ways  more  intelligible 
and  real. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE   DEATH   OF   CHRIST  AND    CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

THE  new  beliefs  created  by  the  interpretation  of  the  per- 
son constituted  the  Christian  religion  on  its  ideal  side  ; 
but  to  become  actual  it  needed  a  worship,  or  the  means  of 
expressing  and  cultivating  reverence  and  of  inculcating 
piety  and  obedience.  Worship  is  a  function  at  once  individual 
and  social,  not  possible  in  the  individual  without  the  influences 
that  make  men  devout,  or  in  society  without  agencies  that 
organize  and  control.  The  relation  which  the  ideal  and  the 
institutional  or  consuetudinary  elements  in  a  religion  sustain 
to  each  other,  has  been  already  indicated  1 ;  and  we  only  need 
to  add  here  that  the  very  law  which  compels  the  idea  to  ex- 
press itself  in  the  institution  and  the  institution  to  justify  itself 
by  means  of  the  idea,  forces  upon  them  a  policy  of  mutual  ad- 
justment. Neither  can  healthily  separate  from  the  other.  The 
reasoned  idea  without  the  worship  is  theology  ;  the  worship 
without  any  reasoned  idea  is  superstition  ;  but  the  two  in 
wholesome  and  corporate  union  make  religion.  What  theo- 
logy is  to  the  speculative  reason,  worship  is  to  the  popular 
consciousness,  a  form  under  which  deity  is  conceived  and 
described.  Each  is  a  language  which  articulates  some 
governing  religious  idea;  and  of  these  two  languages  worship, 
as  the  more  frankly  symbolical,  addresses  the  imagination 
through  several  senses  at  once,  and  is,  therefore,  the  less 
capable  of  being  contradicted,  while  also  the  less  sensitive  to 

1  Ante,  pp.  202-203,  238-240. 

48o 


WORSHIP   AS    A    LANGUAGE  481 

criticism.  Its  acts  and  observances  may  from  constant  repe- 
tition grow  as  stale  as  any  common  task,  yet  even  where  most 
stale  they  can  lift  the  susceptible  man  out  of  and  above  him- 
self till  he  feels  as  if  he  and  God  had  joined  hands  and  stood 
face  to  face.  If  indeed  God  be  conceived  to  stand  but  a  few 
degrees  above  man — and  this  never  happens  without  bringing 
Him  in  some  respects  several  degrees  below  him — the  worship 
will  easily  fulfil  its  function,  though  it  will  signify  little  when 
fulfilled  ;  but  the  higher  and  purer  the  conception  of  God  is, 
the  more  difficult  and  the  more  necessary  the  worship  be- 
comes. For  while  it  enables  religion  to  overcome  the  in- 
capacities of  human  nature,  and  by  incorporating  its  ideals  in 
persons  to  bring  about  their  realization  in  society  and  history  ; 
yet  it  involves  as  a  dangerous  possibility  that  the  observance 
or  the  custom  ma}'  prove  stronger  than  the  idea.  And  if  it 
does,  God  will  be  lowered  rather  than  man  uplifted.  Specu- 
lation may  refine  thought,  but  this  matters  little  if  God  be 
coarsened  and  debased  by  the  means  taken  to  approach  and 
please  Him.  And  in  the  long  run  worship  is  more  powerful 
than  speculation,  for  while  the  one  may  entertain  the  reason 
of  the  few,  the  other  by  its  appeal  to  the  imagination  of  the 
many  commands  the  conscience  and  regulates  the  life. 

§  I.   Christ  as  Idea  and  as  Institution 

I.  Now  this  is  the  point  at  which  the  founders  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  performed  their  most  original  and  creative  act. 
They  so  made  a  person  into  an  institution,  a  mode  and  way 
of  worship  which  at  once  exalted  God  and  dignified  man,  as 
to  make  the  religion  incapable  of  being  localized.  They  acted 
without  conscious  design,  but  in  obedience  to  an  instinct  or 
experience  which  governed  their  thought  ;  and  their  action 
changed  the  event  which  threatened  their  faith  with  extinction 
into  the  condition  of  its  immortality.  There  is  no  other  re- 
ligion which  has  a  crucified  or  slain  person  as  the  sole  and  suf- 

P.C.R.  31 


482  CHRIST  AS  THE  ONLY  SACRIFICE  FOR  SIN 

ficient  medium  through  which  God  approaches  man  and  man 
approaches  God.  This  surprised  ancient  as  it  has  perplexed 
modern  thought,  but,  considered  simply  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
without  the  Cross  the  religion  could  not  have  been.  Christ 
is  in  the  apostolical  records  conceived  as  a  Saviour  who 
saves  by  the  sacrifice  of  Himself,  as  "  the  Lamb  of  God,"  with- 
out blemish  and  without  spot,  "  slain  from  the  foundation  of 
the  world,"  yet  offered  at  the  end  of  the  ages  that  He  might 
redeem  men  by  His  precious  blood.1  "  He  is  our  passover 
sacrificed  for  us,"  ~  "  whom  God  set  forth  as  a  propitiatory  " 
(person),  in  order  that  He  might  "  be  just  and  the  justifier  of 
him  wrho  is  of  the  faith  of  Jesus." 3  This  mode  of  conceiving 
His  death  is  so  integral  alike  to  the  history  and  thought  of  the 
New  Testament  as  to  deserve  to  be  termed  its  organizing 
idea,  but  it  is  so  singular  as  to  be  without  any  parallel  in  the 
ideas  and  customs  either  of  those  natural  religions  which  make 
most  of  sacrifice,4  or  of  those  which  we  are  accustomed  to 
compare  as  historical  with  the  Christian.  Thus  to  Israel  Moses 
was  a  lawgiver  who  commanded  and  threatened,  exacting 
obedience  by  the  hope  of  reward  or  the  fear  of  punishment, 
but  he  was  never  conceived  as  one  who  "appeared  to  put  away 
sin  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself."  Confucius  is  a  sage  whose 
authority  is  based  on  his  wisdom,  or  his  power  in  revealing 
to  persons  and  states  the  secret  of  a  happy  life  ;  but  death, 
whether  his  own  or  another's,  is  to  him  too  great  a  mystery  to 
be  understood  ;  the  wise  man  can  only  sit  dumb  before  it. 
Mohammed  is  a  prophet  who  denounces  hell  to  the  disobedient 

1  John  i.  29  ;  Rev.  xiii.  8  ;  I  Peter  i.  19  ;  Heb.  ix.  26. 

2  i  Cor.  v.  7.  3  Rom.  iii.  25,  26. 

4  This  is  not  the  place  to  examine  Dr.  Frazer's  learned  and  ingenious 
argument  to  the  contrary.  (Golden  BougJi,  and  ed.  vol.  iii.  pp.  186  ft") 
His  discussion  of  this  subject  seems  to  me  a  conspicuous  example  of  con- 
scientious but  uncritical  learning.  He  mistakes  coincidence  in  things 
accidental  for  contact  and  causation  in  things  essential,  and  forgets  that 
there  is  nothing  so  easy  as  to  prove  the  former,  but  nothing,  when  it  has 
been  proved,  so  entirely  insignificant  as  regards  the  latter. 


IS    AN    IDEA    WITHOUT    A    PARALLEL     483 

and  promises  heaven  to  the  faithful  ;  but  he  is  more  distin- 
guished by  the  will  to  inflict  suffering  than  by  the  heart  to 
endure  it,  even  where  it  may  bring  good  to  others.  Buddha 
is  the  nearest  approach  to  Christ ;  he  makes  the  great  renun- 
ciation, surrendering  regal  might  and  right  and  wealth  for 
poverty  and  humiliation,  and  he  makes  an  end  of  the  ritual, 
the  sacrifices,  the  priesthood,  and  the  various  deities  of 
Brahmanism.  For  this  reason  his  people  revere  him,  love 
him,  and  seek  to  follow  in  his  footsteps.  But  here  the  similar- 
ities are  superficial,  while  the  differences  are  radical,  (i.) 
Buddha  is  a  pessimist  ;  he  does  not  love  life,  for  to  him  being 
is  suffering,  and  his  desire  is  to  escape  from  sorrow  by  escap- 
ing from  existence.  But  Christ  is  never  a  pessimist  ;  His  very 
passion  is  the  expression  of  a  splendid  optimism,  the  belief  that 
existence  is  so  good  that  it  ought  not  to  be  lost  but  held  fast 
and  rescued,  and  that  when  purged  from  the  accident  of  sin  it 
will  become  altogether  lovely,  a  thing  to  be  wholly  desired. 
(ii.)  Buddha  is  a  leader,  a  man  to  be  followed  and  imitated  ; 
what  he  did  men  must  do  that  they  may  partake  of  his  illu- 
mination and  enter  into  his  rest.  But  what  Christ  does  no 
other  person  can  do.  He  offers  Himself  a  Sacrifice  that  He 
may  win  eternal  redemption  for  men.  (iii.)  Buddha  is  an 
Indian  ascetic,  whose  highest  work  is  to  break  the  bonds 
of  life  and  all  the  forces  which  make  for  its  continuance  and 
for  the  social  perfecting  of  the  race.  But  Christ  is  in  the 
strict  sense  a  Redeemer  and  a  Sacrifice,  one  whose  sorrow  is 
curative,  who  restores  our  nature  to  personal  and  social  health, 
that  it  may  attain  individual  and  collective  happiness,  per- 
sonal and  general  immortality,  (iv.)  The  basis  of  Buddha's 
salvation  is  a  metaphysical  nihilism.  In  a  world  without  God 
and  immortality,  but  crowded  with  men  of  teachable  moral 
natures,  redemption  is  not  difficult,  instruction  can  accomplish 
it,  the  meditation  which  found  the  way  can  be  followed  until 
the  goal  is  reached.  But  in  a  world  where  God  cannot  cease  to 
be  pure  and  man  cannot  will  himself  out  of  existence,  to  make 


484  THE  DEATH  INTERPRETED  IN  THE  TERMS 

the  guilty  man  fit  to  be  reconciled  with  the  pure  and  eternal 
God  is  a  work  which  may  well  cause  suffering  to  the  holiest 
and  most  blessed  Being.  The  world  which  Christ  redeems  is 
one  of  infinite  reality,  man  being  in  his  own  degree  as  real  as 
God.  The  Passion,  then,  has  a  singular  character  and  unique 
worth  ;  it  stands  alone,  without  any  parallel  in  the  other  re- 
ligions of  history.  Why  it  holds  the  place  it  does,  and  what 
it  does  in  that  place,  are  the  questions  we  have  now  to  discuss. 
2.  What  here  concerns  us,  then,  is  not  the  doctrine  as  to 
the  death  of  Christ,  but  its  function  in  the  Christian  religion. 
How  doctrine  and  function  differ  yet  coincide  we  may  see  as 
we  proceed  ;  but  at  present  we  note  that  any  critical  discus- 
sion as  to  the  process  which  made  His  death  the  basis  of  our 
redemption,  usually  starts  with  Paul  and  the  need  he  felt  to 
resolve  the  antithesis  presented  by  the  fact  of  the  Cross  to  his 
idea  of  the  Messiah.  Now  this  procedure  is  for  two  reasons 
unhistorical :  (i.)  Paul  tells  us  that  he  did  not  invent  the 
belief,  but  found  it  in  possession.1  (ii.)  Jesus  was  the  his- 
torical source  of  the  idea  ; 2  though  experience  and  history 
were  needed  to  make  His  meaning  plain.  The  apostolical 
experience  was  a  kind  of  educational  dialectic,  and  its 
environment  was  like  a  school  where  the  intellect  was  ex- 
ercised by  means  of  theses  and  antitheses.  The  school  had, 
as  it  were,  two  departments  or  sides,  the  sacerdotal  and 
rabbinical,  or  a  school  for  priests  and  a  school  for  scribes. 
The  home  of  the  one  was  the  Temple,  the  home  of  the 
other  was  the  Synagogue.  Both  were  religious,  though  in 
a  totally  different  sense  :  in  the  one  case  the  religion  was. 
more  personal,  more  rooted  in  conviction,  concerned  with 
thought  and  the  government  of  life  ;  in  the  other  case  the 

•^J  O 

religion  was   more  collective,   consisted    more   in    ritual    and 

O  ' 

the  regulation  of  worship,  the    acts  which  expressed   it  and 
the    persons  who   were    its    celebrants.      Both    schopls    were 

1  Ante,  p.  469.  f  Ante,  pp.  395-431,  cf-  475- 


OF  THE  TEMPLE  AND  THE  SYNAGOGUE  485 

concerned  with  Deity,  though  under  distinct  aspects  and  in 
contrasted  relations.  The  God  who  occupied  the  Temple 
was  an  object  of  worship  ;  the  God  who  was  studied  in  the 
Synagogue  was  the  Giver  of  the  law.  The  law  had  indeed 
created  both  the  Temple  and  the  Synagogue,  but  the  law 
did  not  mean  to  the  two  Schools  exactly  the  same  thing. 
To  the  one  it  signified  the  Levitical  legislation,  which  had 
instituted  the  priesthood,  organized  and  regulated  its  ministry, 
described  and  sanctioned  its  sacrifices  ;  to  the  other  it  signified 
the  ethical  precepts  and  the  ceremonial  customs  which  gave 
to  the  State  its  theocratic  character  and  to  the  individual  the 
rules  which  governed  his  conduct.  These  two  schools  appear 
in  the  apostolical  writings,  and  their  very  different  tempers 
are  represented  by  the  sects  described  in  the  historical  books. 
Thus  in  Hebrews  the  term  has  its  distinctly  Levitical  mean- 
ing :  "  the  law  appointed  men  high  priests  "  ; i  priests  "  offer 
gifts  according  to  the  law";"  "according  to  the  law  all 
things  are  cleansed  with  blood,"  3  and  its  sacrifices  are  "  a 
shadow  of  good  things  to  come."  4  But  in  Paul,  though  the 
term  has  an  almost  indescribable  variety  of  meanings,  yet  its 
prevailing  sense  is  the  rabbinical,  the  law  is  the  commandment 
which  enjoins  or  forbids,  which  says  "  Thou  shalt  do  this  "  or 
"Thou  shalt  not  do  that,"  promising  reward  to  the  obedient, 
threatening  punishment  to  the  transgressor.5  Now  both 
these  types  or  schools  of  thought  and  policy  affected  in  the 
way  of  antithesis  the  Christian  synthesis  ;  Christ  appears  in 
contrast  to  the  one  as  the  eternal  Priest  and  Sacrifice,  and  to 
the  other  as  the  Redeemer  of  man  from  the  law  which  killed, 
and  the  Bringcr  of  the  Grace  which  gave  life.  And  it  is 
because  He  so  appears  that  we  can  say  that  the  function 
which  apostolic  thought  assigns  to  His  death  can  be  better 
described  as  an  institution  than  as  a  doctrine. 


vn.  28.  vui.  4.  3  xi.  22. 

5  Cf.  Rom.  ii.  12,  17-27  ;    vii.  7,  12,  et 


486  RELIGION    IN   THE   TEMPLE 

§11.    The  Levitical  Legislation  and  the  Christian  Idea 

I.  The  position  here  may  be  thus  stated  :  Christ  took  the 
place  in  the  new  religion  which  the  Temple  had  held  in  the 
old,  and  as  a  single  Sacrifice  and  eternal  Priest  He  super- 
seded the  multitudinous  sacrifices  and  priests  who  had  stood 
and  mediated  between  God  and  Man.  The  substitution  was 
a  revolution,  for  the  Temple  was  not  a  mere  incident  or 
aspect  of  the  religion,  but  the  symbol  of  man's  whole 
conscious  and  expressed  relation  to  the  Deity.  It  typified, 
therefore,  (i.)  the  presence  and  accessibility  of  God,  His  abode 
among  His  people,  His  desire  to  commune  with  them,  to 
speak  to  them  and  to  hear  their  speech,  (ii.)  The  duty  of  His 
people  to  worship  Him.  He  was  their  God  and  they  were 
His  people,  and  their  right  to  the  Temple  meant  their 
freedom  of  access  to  Him.  (iii.)  This  limitation  involved  on 
their  part  a  double  relation  to  Him,  a  collective  and  a 
personal.  The  collective  was  primary,  for  the  man  must 
be  of  Israel  before  he  could  worship  Israel's  God  ;  but  the 
personal,  though  secondary,  was  essential,  for  the  man  who 
was  an  Israelite  knew  God  and  was  known  of  Him.  (iv.)  The 
worship  prescribed  was  such  as  became  the  character  of 
God  and  expressed  the  state  of  man.  The  character  of  God 
was  holy,  the  state  of  man  was  sinful,  and  the  worship  was  de- 
signed to  reconcile  the  holy  God  to  the  sinful  man.  (v.)  Since 
man  was  sinful  he  could  not  come  directly  into  the  presence 
of  the  Holy,  but  needed  a  representative  to  stand  before  the 
Lord  and  speak  in  his  name  and  on  his  behalf;  hence  came 
the  priest.  And  since  he  had  sins  to  confess  and  be  for- 
given as  well  as  favours  to  ask  or  acknowledge,  he  could 
not  allow  the  priest  to  enter  the  Divine  presence  empty- 
handed,  but  supplied  him  with  the  blood  of  atonement  drawn 
from  the  sacrificial  victim,  or  with  the  gifts  which  his  grati- 
tude prompted,  (vi.)  The  stability  of  the  Temple  and  the 
continuance  of  the  worship  signified  that  the  intercourse  was 


AND    IN    THE    SYNAGOGUE  487 

constant.     The   people  obeyed  God's    voice,   and   He    heard 
their  prayers'. 

2.  The  Temple,  then,  stood  for  an  ideal  of  worship  regulated 
by  the  law,  whose  seat  was  not  the  Synagogue  or  school,  but 
the  national  sanctuary  ;  whose  ministers  were  not  Scribes  or 
rabbis,  but  priests  and  Levites  ;  whose  acts  were  not  reading 
and  preaching,  but  sacrificing  and  sprinkling  of  blood.  It 
signified  a  legislation  not  so  much  recorded  in  books  as  in- 
corporated in  a  living  order.  The  Synagogue  was  provincial 
and  sectarian,  but  the  Temple  was  metropolitan  and  collec- 
tive ;  the  one  spoke  of  difference,  but  the  other  was  sacred  to 
the  unities  of  family  and  faith.  In  the  Synagogue  a  man 
might  be  a  Latin  or  a  Greek,  a  Cilician  or  an  Alexandrian, 
a  pupil  of  Hillel  or  of  Shammai  ;  but  in  the  Temple  he  knew 
himself  to  be  a  son  of  Abraham,  an  Israelite,  who  believed 
Jehovah  alone  to  be  God  and  who  observed  the  customs  of 
the  fathers.  Dispersion  might  occasion  an  enlarged  use  of 
the  Synagogue,  but  it  also  increased  the  significance  and  the 
fascination  of  the  Temple.  The  motherland  is  to  the  imagin- 
ation of  the  colonist  transfigured  by  a  romance  which  the 
eye  accustomed  to  the  hard  realities  of  the  life  within  it 
does  not  see  ;  and  so  he  who  dwelt  far  from  Zion  idealized 
the  holy  place,  as  he  did  not  who  sat  in  its  lengthening 
shadow  and  watched  the  jealousies  and  plottings  of  its  sons. 
It  is  almost  certain  that  the  man  who  wrote  the  Kpistle  to 
the  Hebrews  and  the  men  who  received  it  were  all  the  more 
under  the  spell  of  the  ideal  that  they  knew  so  little  of  the 
actual  Temple  and  its  ways.  Hut  to  all,  whether  near  or 
remote,  it  was  the  living  heart  of  the  religion,  an  epitome  of 
the  people  and  their  historv.  No  other  appeal  to  the  present 
was  so  irresistible  because  none  so  perfectlv  embodied  the  past. 
In  its  earliest  and  simplest  form,  as  the  tabernacle  which 
went  with  the  fathers  through  the  wilderness  led  them  into 
the  promised  land,  and  helped  them  t<  >  build  their  cities 
and  their  state,  it  spoke  of  the  God  who  had  called  them  out 


488  THE    TEMPLE    IN    ISRAEL 

of  Egypt,  chosen  them  out  of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth 
to  be  the  people  of  His  covenant  and  His  grace.  And  when 
the  kings  came  David  felt  it  a  reproach  that  he  should  dwell 
in  a  house  of  cedar,  "  while  God  still  dwelt  within  curtains  "  ; l 
and  so  his  ambition  was  to  be  found  worthy  to  build  Him 
a  house.  This  though  denied  to  David  was  granted  to 
Solomon,  whose  wisdom  designed,  whose  power  erected, 
whose  wealth  adorned  the  first  and  stateliest  temple.  In 
the  most  glorious  of  all  prophetic  visions  Isaiah  had  beheld 
it  filled  with  the  train  of  the  Lord  ;  in  the  most  pathetic  of 
all  prophetic  histories  Jeremiah  had  described  the  anarchy 
and  desolation  in  which  it  and  the  state  alike  perished. 
Yet  towards  the  Temple  the  Exiles  in  Babylon  did  not  cease 
to  turn  tearful  and  longing  eyes,  and  Ezekiel  had  pictured  it 
springing  anew  from  its  ashes  in  splendid  yet  measured 
proportions,  and  opening  its  courts  to  resurgent  and  restored 
Israel. 2  They  came  back  a  peeled  3  and  suffering  remnant, 
who  built  the  house  of  God  amid  poverty  and  in  the  face  of 
dangers  unspeakable,  yet  cheered  by  the  visions  of  the  later 
Isaiah  and  the  mighty  music  of  his  speech  ;  and  so  they 
crowned  the  second  Temple  with  a  glory  which  the  first  had 
never  known.  What  began  in  weakness  lived  in  power,  and 
gathered  to  it  the  sublimest  memories  of  the  people.  Within 
it  the  Levitical  legislation  and  ritual  were  realized  ;  its 
courts  had  been  built  and  its  sacrifices  were  offered  accord- 
ing to  the  law  ;  psalms  written  in  praise  of  God  and  for 
His  service  were  sung  in  its  worship;  it  was  the  symbol  of 
His  name,  the  seat  of  His  visible  presence,  the  home  where 
He  showed  Himself  to  His  people,  conversed  with  them,  and 
proved  Himself  to  be  their  God.  Its  priests  were  sons  of  Aaron, 
who  still  seemed  fragrant  with  the  oil  that  had  consecrated 

1  2  Sam.  vii.  2.  '  Ante.  pp.  251-^53. 

3   Isaiah  xviii.   2,  7,  A.V. ;  cf.   Milton,  P.R.  iv.  136.       Speaking  of  the 
Romans  "\vh(i  conquered  well  but  governed  ill,"  ''  Peeling  their  provinces, 

exhausted  ail  by  lust  and  rapine/' 


AS    IDEAL   AND   AS    REALITY  489 

him,  and  who,  all  the  more  that  they  were  vowed  to  God, 
had  played, the  part  of  heroes  and  taught  the  people  how 
to  win  freedom  by  braving  battle  and  enduring  death.  The 
Temple  thus  made  an  irresistible  appeal  to  the  imagination  ; 
the  Jew,  wherever  he  lived  or  whatever  language  he  spoke, 
ceased  the  moment  he  stood  within  it  to  feel  as  if  he  were 
an  alien,  and  became  consciously  one  of  God's  elect,  who 
could  speak  to  God  and  hear  God  speaking  to  him.  With- 
out it  or  otherwise  than  through  it  he  could  not  think  of 
his  religion,  and  without  his  religion  where  were  the  Jew  ? 
Even  when  the  Temple  had  fallen,  he  could  not  believe  that 
it  had  perished  ;  for  the  priestly  race  survived,  and  so  long 
as  it  did  not  die  the  hope  lived  that  Israel  would  yet  praise 
God  in  the  midst  of  the  holy  city. 

3.  Xow  the  Apostles  were  Jews  who  thought  in  the 
manner  of  their  race,  yet  as  regards  the  Temple  and  its 
worship  they  had  been  forced  to  think  otherwise  than  their 
race  thought.  Experience  had  made  them  conscious  of  the 
contradiction  bet \veen  its  actual  state  and  its  ideal  signi- 
ficance. They  knew  that  it  was  the  priests  and  not  the 
Pharisees  who  had  crucified  Jesus  ;  that  up  to  the  entry  into 
Jerusalem  the  latter  had  been  Mis  chief  opponents,  but  from 
then  onwards  the  former  had  become  Mis  irreconcilable 
antagonists;  and  that  while  the  rabbis  had  argued,  the  priests, 
who  were  a  ruling  as  well  as  a  sacred  caste,  had  acted, 
and  acted,  as  rulers  will,  with  more  regard  for  order  than 
for  right.  It  was  in  the  court  of  the  high  priest  that 
counsel  was  taken  against  Jesus.1  Me  is  betrayed  to  "the 
chief  priests."'  They  send  the  multitude  who  seixe  Mim.:! 
Mr,  is  conducted  to  the  palace  of  the  high  priest;'  where  Me 
is  tried  and  declared  guilty  of  blasphemy.0  "  The  chief 
priests"  bind  Mini,  deliver  Mini  up  to  Pilate,  accuse  Mini, 

1   Matt,  xxvi.  3,  4.  "   M;iU.  xxvi.  15  ;   Luke  xxii.  4. 

8   Matt.  xxvi.  47  ;   Mark  xix   43  ;   Luke  xxii.  50. 

4    Matt.  xxvi.  57  ;  John  xviii.  24.          l  Mark  xiv.  63  ;   Matt.  xxvi.  65. 


490      THE    PRIESTS    AND   THE    PHARISEES 

demand  His  death,1  and  extort  it  from  the  hesitating 
governor.2  They  stiffen  the  purpose  of  Pilate  by  raising  the 
cry,  "Crucify  Him,"3  and  wish  the  cynical  inscription  "The 
King  of  the  Jews  "  changed  to  the  personal  charge,  "  He  said 
'  I  am  the  King  of  the  Jews'"  ;4  and  while  He  is  in  agony 
they  mock  His  impotence.5  And  they  dealt  with  the 
disciples  as  they  had  dealt  with  Him.  The  "  priests  and  the 
captain  of  the  temple  "  are  sore  troubled  because  the  Apostles 
preach  Jesus.6  The  judges  of  Peter  and  John,  on  account 
of  "  the  good  deed  done  to  the  impotent  man,"  are  Annas 
and  Caiaphas  and  "the  kindred  of  the  high  priest."7  It  is 
the  same  persons  who,  being  "  filled  with  jealousy,  laid  hands 
on  the  Apostles,  and  put  them  in  public  ward," 8  and  who 
charge  them  "  not  to  teach  in  this  Name." £  While  the 
priests  seem  to  increase  in  vigilant  severity  10  the  Pharisees 
seem  to  become  dubious,  hesitant,  double-minded,  like  men 
who  temporize  in  action  because  they  halt  in  thought.11 
In  the  Synagogue,  where  the  Pharisees  reigned,  the  Apostles 
were  allowed  not  only  to  sit  but  to  speak  and  dispute ; 12 
but  in  the  Temple,  which  the  priests  controlled,  they  were  not 
permitted  to  worship,  Paul's  attempt  to  do  so  provoking  the 
riot  that  led  to  his  imprisonment  and  the  appeal  to  Caesar.13 
Exclusion  from  it  was  thus  the  sign  and  seal  of  their 
alienation  from  Israel,  and  forced  upon  them  the  questions, 
Why  had  it  been  built  ?  What  was  its  function  and  pur- 
pose ?  The  question  raised  by  the  conflict  of  the  local  cult 
with  the  universal  idea  was  as  old  as  the  prophets  of  Israel, 

1   Mark  xvi.  5  ;  Matt,  xxvii.  I,  2,  11-14  ;   Luke  xxiii.  1-3. 
8  Luke  xxiii.  13-19.  3  John  xix.  6.  4  John  xix.  21. 

5  Mark  xv.  31.  6  Acts  iv.  i,  2.  7  Acts  iv.  5,  6,  23. 

8  Acts  v.   17,  iS.  9  Acts  v.  28. 

10  Cf.  vii.  I  :  ix.  i  ;  xiii.  2  ;  xxiv.  i. 

11  Cf.  the  attitude  of  Gamaliel  'Acts  v.  34-39)  and  the  conduct  of  the 
Pharisees  at  the  trial  of  Paul  (xxiii.  6,  7). 

12  Acts  ix.  20  ;  xiii.  5,  14,  15  ;  xiv.  I  ;  xvii.  17  ;  xviii.  4,  26. 

13  Acts  xxi.  26-30. 


IN    RELATION    TO   THE    APOSTLES         491 

and  as  new  as  the  sect  of  the  Essenes,  who  forsook  the  Temple 
and  cultivated  piety  in  separateness  and  seclusion.  Men  of  a 
Hellenistic  temper,  like  Josephus,  explained  it  as  a  mirror  of 
the  universe,  while  Philo  found  in  it  an  allegory  concerning 
the  things  sensible  and  things  intelligible  which  made  up  his 
whole  of  being.  Ideas  of  this  order  were  not  unknown  to 
the  earliest  converts  ;  we  see  them  struggling  with  the 
Christian  problem  in  the  mind  of  Stephen.  He  conceives 
the  Temple  as  alien  to  monotheism  j1  the  universal  God  can- 
not be  confined  to  a  single  place,  the  Builder  of  Nature  to  a 
house  built  by  human  hands.  But  though  logic  may  prove 
that  it  is  possible  to  worship  anywhere  a  God  who  is  every- 
where, yet  there  are  deeper  questions  than  any  exercise  in 
dialectics  can  solve.  Are  not  the  people  more  than  the 
place  ?  Are  all  men  equally  fit  and  free  to  worship  ?  Do 
sin  and  guilt  matter  nothing  to  Deity?  As  He  has  no 
respect  of  persons  is  He  also  without  respect  for  character  ? 
Are  there  no  terms  to  be  observed,  no  obstacles  on  man's 
part  which  call  for  a  priest  or  other  mediator?  These 
questions  the  Hellenistic  speech  of  Stephen  did  not  touch, 
nor  did  the  early  Apostles  think  that  they  had  any  con- 
nexion with  the  person  and  death  of  Christ.  In  his  earliest 
discourses  Peter  speaks  of  Jesus  as  having  been  crucified  "  by 
the  hands  of  lawless  men,"  2  who  had  "  killed  the  Prince  of 
Life,"3  and  "set  themselves  against  the  Lord  and  His 
Anointed,"4  "  whom  also  they  slew,  hanging  Him  on  a  tree."3 
In  curious  forgctfulness  of  what  he  had  been  taught  he  seems 
to  have  conceived  the  cross  as  the  symbol  of  victorious  evil, 
which  was  only  defeated  by  the  raising  of  Christ  from  the 
dead.  But  light  came  from  an  unexpected  quarter  ;  the 
Ethiopian  Eunuch  put  a  question  which  effected  the  orienta- 
tion of  the  Apostolic  mind:  did  the  prophet  describe 
himself  or  some  other  as  a  sheep  led  to  the  slaughter  ?  6  In 

1  Acts  vi.  14  ;  vii.  46-50.         -  ii.  23.  *  iii.  14. 

4  iv.  21,  22.  5  x.  39.  6  viii.  30  35. 


492 

this  there  was  a  fine  fitness ;  prophecy  had  created  and 
organized  the  Hebrew  Temple,  preached  the  idea  that  made 
it  necessary,  declared  against  the  local  cults,  urged  the 
creation  of  a  central  sanctuary  where  the  elect  people 
could  collectively  meet  the  holy  God,  and  offer  Him  a 
cleanlier  and  seemlier  worship.  But  time  had  demonstrated 
how  easy  it  was  for  an  institution  founded  for  the  worship  of 
God  to  supersede  the  God  in  whose  honour  it  had  been 
founded,  to  impose  upon  Him  its  own  limitations,  and  invoke 
His  authority  to  sanction  and  to  sanctify  its  sins.  And  now 
the  spirit  of  prophecy,  reincarnated,  substituted  a  person  for 
a  positive  institution,  a  worship  which  knew  no  place  and  no 
sacred  caste,  for  a  worship  which  was  bound  to  a  special  race 
and  its  peculiar  customs. 

§  III.      The  Levitical  Categories  interpret  the  Christian 

Idea 

I.  Apostolic  thought  starts,  then,  from  a  positive  belief, 
"Christ  died  for  our  sins,"  and  proceeds  to  construe  this 
"according  to  the  Scriptures."  If  the  books  we  now  call  the 
Old  Testament  had  then  canonical  existence,  they  yet  had 
not  a  uniform  authority.  The  Sadducean  priests  believed 
strongly  in  the  Levitical  legislation,  which  they  termed  the 
law  of  Moses,  for  it  was  the  charter  of  their  privileges,  the 
basis  of  their  rights  ;  and  their  usage  affected  the  apostolical 
literature,  though  with  significant  differences.  Thus  Paul 
never  uses  the  terms  priest  or  priesthood,  but  in  Hebrews 
they  occur  thirty  times.  Paul  speaks  rarely,  if  at  all,  of 
sacrifices  in  the  Levitical  sense,  but  in  Hebrews  this  sense 
was  fundamental.  The  sacrificial  idea  was  indeed  too  ger- 
mane to  the  Pauline  mode  of  thought  to  be  entirely  ignored.1 
And  so  he  says,  "  For  our  passover  has  been  sacrificed,  even 

1  A.  Ritschl  (Rechfertigung  u.  Versohnung,  ii.  pp.  161-163)  argues 
against  Richard  Schmidt  that  Paul  construes  the  death  of  Christ  through 
the  Old  Testament  idea  of  sacrifice.  But  he  forgets  that  there  are 


AND    THE    PAULINE    THEOLOGY  493 

Christ'';1  but  two  things  are  here  significant,  (a)  the  pass- 
over  was  older  than  the  Levitical  system  and  independent 
of  its  priesthood  ;  and  (/3)  it  was  above  anything  in  Judaism 
suggestive  of  the  last  supper  and  the  passion.3  Still  it  is 
used  here  to  enforce  a  duty  and  not  to  define  a  doctrine. 
Since  the  lamb  is  already  slain,  the  old  leaven  ought  to  be 
cast  out,  the  house  of  the  soul  purged  from  its  sin.  A 
second  illustrative  usage  occurs  in  Ephesians :  "  Even  as 
Christ  gave  Himself  for  us,  an  offering  and  a  sacrifice  to 
God  for  an  odour  of  sweet  smell."3  lie  here  enjoins  a 
love  like  Christ's  by  inviting  consideration  of  His  sacrifice. 
But  the  comparison  was  probably  more  literary  than  ritual 
in  its  origin  ;  he  was  thinking  of  the  sacrifices  God  de- 
lighted in  rather  than  of  those  the  priest  loved  to  offer.4 
But  one  famous  Pauline  text  owes  its  importance  to  what 
we  may  term  a  Levitical  category  :  "  Whom  God  set  forth 
(as)  propitiatory  through  faith  in  His  blood."5  There  are 
here  two  sacrificial  terms,  (a)  iXaartjpiov  —  "  propitiator}',"  and 
($)  eV  T(O  aurov  a'i^an  =  "  in  His  blood."  As  to  (a)  the 
term  is  difficult  whether  taken  according  to  its  classical  or 
its  Hellenistic  usage,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  determine  its 
sense  exegetically.  For  reasons  impossible  to  enumerate  it 
is  here  regarded  as  an  adjective  qualifying  02',  "  whom,"  i.e. 
Christ  Jesus.  lie  is  set  forth  as  a  propitiator}'  person,  one 
able  to  perform  the  things  the  verse  goes  on  to  describe. 
As  to  ',3)  the  phrase  is  characteristically  Pauline,  and  occurs 
in  .contexts  which  emphasize  its  sacrificial  quality."  The 

many  view-  of  sacrifice  in  the  Old  Testament.  With  the  Levitical  vic\v, 
pmperly  .so  called,  no  writer  had  less  atlmity  than  I'aul,  and  no  one 
wa-.  le-,s  nithirnccd  by  it  ;  but  it  would  IK:  hard  to  overestimate  the 
intlnence  exercised  on  Ins  mind  by  the  sullennu;"  >ervant  ot  ( ioil  in  the 
later  Kaiah.  For  a  severe  and  not  quite  fair  criticism  of  Kitschl,  see 
Secber^,  MT  Tod  Christi,  pp.  201-203. 

1    i  ('or.  v.  8.  -   Ante,  p.  423.  3   Fph.  v.  2. 

4  Ct.  1's.  xl.  6  ;    Heb.  \.  5,  u.  b   Rom.  iii.  25. 

6   Rom.  v.  9  ;    I  Cor.  x.  16  ;   Col.  i.  20  ;   Eph.  i.  7  ;   ii.   13 


494     THE    SACRIFICIAL    PERSON    BECOMES 

stress  laid  on  it  being  "His"  is  manifestly  intended  to 
differentiate  it  from  the  blood  of  beasts,  whether  of  the 
paschal  lamb  or  the  Levitical  animals.  If,  then,  these  terms 
be  so  understood,  what  does  the  sentence  taken  as  a  whole 
affirm  ?  (i.)  That  the  person  of  Christ  as  propitiatory  is  a 
means  by  which  guilty  man  can  be  reconciled  to  the 
righteous  God.  (ii.)  That  it  owes  this  character  to  the 
express  and  public  act  of  God,  who  of  His  own  will  and  from 
His  own  initiative,  unmoved  by  anything  which  man  had 
done,  set  forth  for  all  eyes  to  see  this  propitiatory  person, 
(iii.)  To  this  public  act  of  God  there  is  needed  a  responsive 
and  correlative  act  of  man — "  through  faith."  This,  too,  is 
characteristically  Pauline  ;  for  he  is  most  mystical  when  most 
doctrinal.  Where  God  wills  and  man  believes  the  two 
coalesce  in  a  unity  which  yet  dissolves  the  personality  of 
neither,  (iv.)  The  aspect  under  which  faith  sees  the  pro- 
pitiatory person  is  sacrificial — "  in  His  blood."  (v.)  While 
the  person  and  the  death  had  a  history  in  time  His  pro- 
pitiatory quality  is  as  timeless  as  the  act  of  God,  i.e.  it 
explains  why  He  passed  over  "  the  sins  done  aforetime,"  and 
"demonstrates  His  righteousness  in  the  present,"  proving 
Him  for  all  time  to  be  "just  while  the  justifier  of  him  who 
is  of  faith  in  Jesus."  We  may  say,  then,  that  Paul  in  this 
text  conceived  Christ  as  having  fulfilled  for  all  time,  by  the 
gracious  act  of  God,  all  the  functions  which  the  Levitical 
legislation  proposed  to  perform  for  Israel.  His  person  was 
an  institution  erected  by  the  will  of  God,  with  whom  the 
initiative  remains,  for  the  saving  of  man.  In  Christ,  then, 
the  elaborate  mechanism  of  the  priestly  worship  is  done 
away  ;  faith  sees  the  inner  purpose  and  the  outer  ways  of 
God  as  God  Himself  knows  them,  and  the  justified  man 
lives  in  love  and  peace  with  the  just  God. 

2.  But  it  is  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  that  we  find 
the  Levitical  categories  most  exhaustively  used.  Christ  is 
there  conceived  as  at  once  priest  and  sacrifice,  in  each  case 


THE   GREAT    HIGH    PRIEST  495 

in  the  later  and  liturgical  rather  than  the  older  and  domestic 
sense.  The  priest  is  defined  as  a  mediator  designated  of 
man  and  called  of  God,  "  that  he  may  offer  both  gifts  and 
sacrifices  for  sins."1  The  two  ideas  stand,  therefore,  together  : 
no  priest  without  a  sacrifice,  and  the  sacrifice  ever  is  as  the 
priest  is.  Hence  he  is  the  determinative  idea ;  if  he  is 
changed,  the  law  or  religion  is  also  changed.2  But  in  the 
twofold  aspect  of  his  office  correlative  ethical  qualities  are 
involved  :  towards  men  he  ought  to  exercise  a  measured 
sympathy  (neTpiOTraQelv  Swdfievos*),  and  before  God  he  must 
stand  purged  from  sin.3  Now  in  these  respects  Christ  was 
qualified  pre-eminently  for  the  high  priesthood.  He  was 
"  without  sin,"  and  in  eternity  God  said  to  Him  :  "  Thou  art 
My  Son,  this  day  have  I  begotten  Thee."4  While  by  origin, 
nature,  and  rank,  He  stood  before  men  the  image  and  re- 
presentative of  God,h  yet  He  so  partook  of  flesh  and  blood, 
and  was  so  made  in  all  things  like  unto  His  brethren,  as  to 
be  able  to  stand  in  their  name  before  God.6  And  He  was 
qualified  in  character  as  well  as  in  nature,  being  so  "touched 
with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities,"  as  to  be  able  to  succour  the 
tempted.7  Hence  both  the  vocation  of  God  and  the  designa- 
tion of  man  were  His.8 

But  how  could  Jesus,  who  was  of  Judah  and  not  of  Levi, 
the  priestly  race  which  alone,  according  to  the  law,  could 
offer  sacrifices  in  the  Temple,  be  in  any  proper  sense  a  high 
priest  ?!l  Here  the  writer  boldly  transcends  the  Levitical 
categories,  in  order  that  he  may  prove  the  old  covenant  to 
be  provisional  and  transient,  while  the  new  is  final  and  per- 
manrnt.  And  he  does  this  by  an  argument  which  has  an 
instructive  parallel  in  Paul.  The  latter  says  the  promise  is 
the  older,  the  law  is  the  younger,  and  it  was  introduced  not 
as  an  end  in  itself,  but  as  a  means  towards  the  end  con- 

1  v.  i,  4.  s  vii.  12.  *  v.  2  ;  vii.  27. 

4  iv.   I  5  ;   v.  5.  5   i.    2,  3.  B   ii.   14.   17. 

7  iv.  15  ;  ii.  8  ;  vii.  26.  8  v.   5  :  vii.  28.  9  vii.  14. 


496  THE    ORDER   OF    MELCHIZEDEK 

tained  in  the  promise.1  The  promise  therefore  can  never 
be  superseded  by  the  law,  and  comes  to  life  again  in  the 
gospel.  The  writer  of  Hebrews  uses  personal  names,  but 
he  intends  the  same  thing.  There  was  an  older  priesthood, 
one  independent  of  the  descent  and  succession  which  were 
of  the  essence  of  Aaron's,  viz.  Melchizedek's,  "  who  abideth 
a  priest  continually."2  His  office  did  not  owe  its  being  to 
any  father  or  mother,  or  its  continuance  to  any  child,  for  it 
was  constituted  by  the  vocation  of  God,  and  had  neither 
beginning  of  days  nor  end  of  life.  So  the  Levitical  objec- 
tion to  a  priesthood  unauthorized  and  contrary  to  the  law 
is  anticipated  and  answered  thus  :  "  I  do  not  claim  for 
Christ  an  Aaronic  priesthood, — that  were  but  to  affirm  that 
He  was  made  '  after  the  law  of  a  carnal  commandment ' ; 
but  I  do  claim  that  He  belongs  to  an  older,  a  higher,  and 
a  more  unchangeable  order,  made  '  after  the  power  of  an 
endless  life.' 3  And  He  was  so  made  by  the  act  of  God, 
who  said  unto  Him  :  '  Thou  art  a  priest  for  ever  after 
the  order  of  Melchizedek.'4  The  superiority  of  this  order 
to  yours  is  manifest ;  for  did  not  the  lower  priest  do  hom- 
age to  the  higher  when  Levi  in  Abraham  paid  tithes  to 
Melchizedek?5  The  old  priests  were  instituted  'without 
oath  '  ;  but  to  Christ  '  the  Lord  sware  and  will  not  repent 
Himself,  Thou  art  a  priest  for  ever.' 6  In  the  old  order  there 
was  a  multitude,  ever  issuing  from  birth,  ever  devoured  by 
death  ;  in  the  new  order  there  is  but  one,  who  '  abideth  for 
ever.'7  He,  as  sinless,  has  no  need  like  the  old  high  priests 
'  to  offer  up  sacrifices  for  His  own  sins ' ;  nor  is  He  like 
them  a  man  'having  infirmity,'  but  He  is  'the  Son  perfected 
for  evermore.'  "s 

The    comparison   which    has  thus  become   a    fundamental 
contrast    is    not    simply    personal    and   official    but  also    ob- 

1  Gal.  iii.  17-19.  2  vi.  20  ,  vii.  1-3.  3  vii.  16. 

4  v.  6  ;  vii.  17.  5  vii.  4-10.  6  vii.  21. 

7  vii.  23,  24.  8  v.  3  ;   vii.  26-28 


IDENTITY   OF    PRIEST   AND    SACRIFICE  497 

jective,  relates  to  the  system  or  religion  as  well  as  to  the 
priesthood.  The  note  of  time  is  stamped  upon  the  Levitical 
institution  ;  eternity  and  immutability  are  the  attributes  of 
Christ,  who  is  "  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for  ever." ' 
He  has  "  become  the  surety  of  a  better  covenant," 2  while 
that  which  has  been  "  groweth  old  and  waxeth  aged  and 
nigh  to  vanishing  away."3  He  "  is  able  to  save  to  the  utter- 
most them  that  draw  nigh  unto  God  through  Him";4  but 
though  the  old  priest  stood  day  by  day  ministering,  he 
offered  sacrifices  "which  could  never  take  away  sins."5  And 
it  is  at  this  point,  where  the  objective  comparison  becomes 
most  acute  as  a  contrast,  that  the  argument  as  to  the  abolition 
of  the  old  by  the  new  covenant  becomes  most  emphatic  and 
conclusive.  The  law  had  a  multitude  of  sacrifices,  the  new 
faith  has  but  one  ;  yet  its  one  is  of  infinitely  more  worth 
than  all  the  multitude  offered  under  the  law.';  They  were 
bulls  and  goats  and  calves,  and  though  repeated  without 
ceasing  they  yet  gave  God  no  pleasure,  nor  did  they  cleanse 
the  man's  conscience,  or  qualify  him  to  serve  God.7  But 
Christ's  sacrifice,  which  He  offered  "once  for  all,"  was  Him- 
self;8 the  very  reason  of  His  coming  in  the  flesh  was  that 
He  might  offer  Himself  to  God,  whose  will  He  delighted 
to  do,  and  who  was  weary  of  "  whole  burnt  offerings  and 
sacrifices  for  sin."1' 

3.  The  transmuting  of  the  priest  into  the  sacrifice  with- 
out losing  the  identity  and  the  reality  of  either — on  the  con- 
trary, only  making  both  more  sure  and  their  unit}'  yet  more 
absolute — is  a  striking  audacity  of  thought,  and  enables  the 
writer  to  bring  his  argument  to  a  remarkable  synthesis 
which  we  ma}'  represent  thus  : 

i.  The  Son  accomplishes  what  He  does  in  harmony  with 
the  will  of  the  Father,  who  appoints  Him  to  the  office,  calls 

1  xiii.  8.  '  vii.  22.  *  viii.  13. 

4  vii.  25.  5  x.  1 1.  8   i\.  11,  12,  25,  26. 

7  ix.  13  ;  x.  4.  8  i.x.  26.  *  x.  5    10. 

P.C.R.  t.2 


498       THE    PRIESTHOOD    AND    SACRIFICE 

Him  to  the  priesthood,  approves  the  sacrifice  which  is 
prompted  by  the  delight  to  do  His  will,  and  is  offered 
through  the  eternal  Spirit. 

ii.  The  unity  of  the  priest  and  the  sacrifice  secures  to  the 
sacrifice  all  the  worth,  the  dignity,  the  grace  and  the  power 
which  belong  to  the  person  ;  and  secures  to  the  priest  all  the 
virtue,  the  merit,  the  redemptive  efficacy  which  inhere  in  the 
sacrifice.  Hence  He  is  said  to  have  made  purification  of  sins,1 
to  have  destroyed  him  that  had  the  power  of  death  and 
delivered  those  who  lived  in  bondage  to  it.2  He  is  the 
author  of  eternal  salvation,  brings  in  a  better  hope,  remits 
sins,  perfects  the  sanctified,  and  wins  eternal  redemption.3 
The  blood  which  He  shed  in  sacrifice  speaks  better  things 
than  that  of  Abel,  purges  the  conscience  from  dead  works, 
and  because  of  it  God  remembers  our  sins  and  iniquities  no 
more.4 

iii.  His  eternal  priesthood  signifies  His  eternal  existence  ; 
i.e.  His  power  to  save  is  without  beginning  and  is  everlasting. 
This  has,  so  to  say,  a  temporal  and  a  spatial  expression, 
(a)  The  temporal  expression  shows  that  though  the  sacrifice 
was  made  at  a  single  point  of  time,  yet  it  ranged  backward 
as  well  as  forward,  "  else  He  must  have  suffered  often  since 
the  foundation  of  the  world."5  And  this  finds  splendid 
illustration  in  chapter  xi.  Those  who  are  there  named  are 
men  who  have  believed  "unto  the  saving  of  the  soul."6 
They  did  not  live  by  the  Levitical  priests  or  their  sacrifices, 
but  "  by  faith  " ;  and  faith  signified  that  as  Moses  "  esteemed 
the  reproach  of  Christ  greater  riches  than  all  the  treasures  of 
Egypt,"7  the  secret  of  their  strength  was  with  Him.  In  this 
historical  and  personal  form  we  find  the  same  permanence 
ascribed  to  Christ  that  Paul  states  in  the  more  abstract 
terms  of  the  mystery  and  hidden  wisdom  which  God  had 
before  the  worlds  determined  to  reveal,  or  of  the  Providence 

1  i.  3,       *  ii.  14,  15.        •  v.  9  ;  vii.  19  ;  ix.  12.       *  xii.  24,  17  ;  ix.  14. 
5  ix.  26.  8  x.  39.  7  xi.  26. 


ETERNAL    EFFECTUAL    UNIVERSAL       499 

which  has  continued  since  the  creation  of  this  visible  order. 
(/6?)  The  spatial  expression  is  quite  as  characteristic.  The 
writer  cannot  think  of  the  priest  and  the  sacrifice  without 
the  Temple  ;  and  he  is  Alexandrian  enough  to  allegorize 
or  spirituali/.e  without  personalizing  the  place.  Christ  has 
passed  through  the  heavens,  has  indeed  entered  heaven 
itself,  appeared  before  the  face  of  God  for  us,  and  sat  down 
at  the  right  hand  of  the  Majesty  on  high.1  Hence  the 
throne  of  God  has  become  "  the  throne  of  grace,"  ~  which  we 
can  approach  with  boldness,  and  "  enter  into  the  holy  place 
by  the  blood  of  Jesus."  He,  therefore,  abides  "  eternal  in 
the  heavens,"  "  the  Mediator  of  the  new  covenant,"  a  being 
as  imperishable  as  His  home.3 

iv.  The  unchangeable  is  also  a  universal  priesthood.  He 
says  indeed  that  Jesus  suffered  "  that  He  might  sanctify  the 
people  through  His  own  blood";  but  "the  people"  here 
does  not  mean  Israel,  but  "  the  spirits  of  just  men  made 
perfect";4  for,  as  the  author  says,  Jesus  "  tasted  death  for 
every  man  "  (inrep  Travro?),5  and  became  "  the  Author  of 
eternal  salvation  unto  all  them  that  obey  Him."  The 
correlate  of  perpetuity  is  thus  universality  ;  the  sacrifice  that 
knows  no  time  can  show  no  respect  of  persons.  The  man 
for  whom  He  died  is  all  mankind. 

v.  Our  discussion  has  been  concerned  not  with  the  doc- 
trine, but  with  the  religious  function  of  the  death  ;  yet  it  is 
necessary  to  say  a  word  as  to  one  theological  question.  Is 
the  sacrifice  here  conceived  as  vicarious?  This  has  been  met 
with  a  very  decided  negative  ;  and  it  has  been  argued  that 
substitution  was  unknown  to  the  Levitical  sacrifices,  which 
were  gifts  to  God  rather  than  expiatory  sufferings  ;  that  "  the 
scapegoat"  which  bore  the  sins  of  Israel  was  a  symbolical 
act,  but  no  proper  sacrifice,  for  it  was  not  offered  to  God,  but 
driven  away  into  the  desert.''  This  may  or  may  not  be  true, 


500    THE   PROPHETIC    IDEA   OF   SACRIFICE 

but  it  does  not  determine  the  question.  For  Christ's  sacrifice, 
like  His  priesthood,  stands  in  an  order  by  itself.  Christ 
offered  Himself  to  God.  Why  ?  For  our  sins.  Wherein  was 
He  distinguished  from  the  Levitical  high  priests  ?  He  was 
sinless,  they  were  sinful,  and  so  while  they  needed  to  offer 
for  themselves,  He  did  not.  How,  then,  shall  we  conceive  a 
sacrificial  act,  which  was  purely  for  others,  and  in  no  respect 
for  the  offerer  Himself?  We  may  be  too  fastidious  to  use 
the  terms  "  vicarious "  and  "  substitutionary,"  but  it  is  easier 
to  object  to  the  terms  than  to  escape  the  idea  they  express. 

vi.  This  exposition,  then,  leaves  us  with  the  principle 
already  formulated  :  a  person  is  substituted  for  an  institution  , 
one  uncreated  and  immortal  Priest  supersedes  all  mortal  and 
visible  priesthoods.  The  full  significance  of  this  has  yet  to 
be  seen,  but  one  point  may  here  be  emphasized — the  change 
in  the  priesthood  signified  a  radical  change  in  the  relation 
of  God  to  sacrifice.  In  the  Levitical,  as  in  other  religious 
systems,  the  sacrifice  was  offered  to  please  God,  to  win  His 
favour,  to  propitiate  Him  by  the  surrender  of  some  object 
precious  to  man.  But  in  the  Christian  system  this  stand- 
point is  transcended  :  the  initiative  lies  with  God,  for  in  the 
fine  phrase  of  the  writer,  "  it  became  Him,  in  bringing  many 
sons  unto  glory,  to  make  the  Author  of  their  salvation  perfect 
through  sufferings."1  Whatever  the  death  of  Christ  may 
signify,  it  does  not  mean  an  expedient  for  quenching  the 
wrath  of  God,  or  for  buying  off  man  from  His  vengeance. 
This  was  a  gain  for  religion  greater  than  mind  can  calculate. 

§  IV.     The  Christian  Sacrifice  Interpreted  through 
tJie  Prophetic  Idea 

With  Hebrews  the  attempt  to  draw  a  formal  parallel  be- 
tween Christ  and  the  Levitical  system  may  be  said  to  end  ; 
and  so,  with  the  exception  of  a  possible  and  figurative  refer- 


THE    NEW    SERVANT   OF   GOD  501 

ence  in  the  Apocalypse, l  He  is  never  again  described  as 
"  the  high  priest  of  our  confession."  -  But  this  does  not  mean 
that  the  idea  of  His  person  as  the  new  and  purer  institution 
was  dropped  cr  forgotten  ;  on  the  contrary,  the  tendency  was 
to  increase  the  emphasis  on  its  reconciliatory  function.  He  be- 
came more  and  more  the  sole  ground  and  means  of  worship  ; 
but  He  was  construed  more  through  prophetic  ideas  than 
through  Levitical  customs.  This  is  most  apparent  in  I  Peter, 
which  we  may  describe  as  an  exposition  of  Christ  in  the 
terms  of  the  Second  Isaiah.  So  it  is  said  that  He  "did  no  sin, 
neither  was  guile  found  in  His  mouth  "  ;  that  He  "  bare  our 
sins  in  His  own  body  upon  the  tree,"  and  suffered  "  the 
righteous  for  the  unrighteous"  ;3  and  that  the  Spirit  of  Christ 
"  in  the  prophets  testified  beforehand  the  sufferings  of  Christ 
and  the  glories  that  should  follow  them."  4  More  distinctly 
prophetical  still  is  the  picture  of  Him  as  "a  Lamb  without 
blemish  and  without  spot,"5  "foreknown  before  the  founda- 
tion of  the  world."  The  latter  phrase  suggests  the  lamb  in 
the  Apocalypse,  which,  in  the  picturesque  speech  of  the  Seer, 
is  said  to  have  been  "  slain  from  the  foundation  of  the  world."  6 
Both  books  thus  represent  the  timelessness  which  belongs  to 
the  sacrifice,  which,  though  to  us  it  occurs  at  a  given  moment, 
yet  stands  to  God's  eye  above  and  outside  time,  as  real  before 
as  after  man  saw  it  happen.  The  lamb  is,  indeed,  the  most 
tender  and  the  most  terrible  figure  in  the  Apocalypse,  at  once 
august  and  winsome  to  those  who  love  and  worship,  awful  and 
intolerable  to  those  who  despise.  Twenty-nine  times  does 
the  Seer  refer  to  Him  ;  in  His  blood  the  guilty  are  cleansed 
and  made  saints,  who  praise  His  name  for  ever  and  ever  ;  7  be- 
fore His  throne  the  wicked  stand,  and  call  upon  the  moun- 
tains to  fall  and  hide  them  from  His  wrath. s  The  same  figure, 
interpreted  through  the  same  prophetic  category,  appears  in 

1  i.  13.          *  Heb.  iii.  I.  3  ii.  22  -24  :   iii.  18  ;  cf.  Is:i.  liii.  4-9. 

*  i.  II.  5  i.  19-20;   ci.  I.->;i.  lni.  J.  °  xiii.  8. 

7  vii.  14  ;  v.  9.  8  vi.  16  ;  cf.  xx.  i  r. 


502         THE    NEW   TABERNACLE   OF   GOD 

John's  Gospel,1  and  is  expounded  and  explained  in  his  first 
Epistle.  He  is  "  the  propitiation  for  our  sins,"  and  "  His  blood 
cleanses  from  all  sin."2  And  alongside  the  idea  of  His  com- 
plete efficacy  as  a  sacrifice  or  institution  which  qualifies  man 
for  the  worship  of  God,  there  stands  an  attitude  of  indifference 
to  the  Levitical  system.  It  has  become  a  question  about  which 
Jews  may  dispute,  but  in  which  the  Christian  has  no  concern,3 
for  he  is  purified  by  other  agencies  and  in  a  more  perfect  de- 
gree;4 and  as  if  to  show  how  all  that  the  old  symbols  had 
struggled  to  express  had  now  become  intelligible  and  access- 
ible realities,  Christ  appears  as  "  the  tabernacle  of  God  with 
men,"  as  "  the  temple  of  God  "  in  the  New  Jerusalem.5  He  is 
the  image  of  the  Invisible,  and  in  Him  "all  the  fulness  of  the 
Godhead  "  dwelleth.6  The  Divine  presence  which  Israel  once 
found  in  tabernacle  and  temple,  man  is  now  to  find  in  Christ  ; 
He  lives  in  the  heart  of  history  as  God  manifest  in  flesh, 
that  all  men  may  see  His  glory  and  share  His  grace.7  And 
the  gate  of  this  Temple  stands  open  day  and  night,  the  pil- 
grim does  not  find  it  closed  against  him,  nor  need  any  child 
of  the  city  mourn  that  he  cannot  scale  its  walls,  for  no  stone 
was  used  to  build  it ;  and  no  buyers  or  sellers  can  traffic  in 
its  courts,  or  moneychangers  sit  at  their  tables  in  the  sacred 
precincts,  for  its  privileges  are  without  price,  and  they  that 
come  to  worship  must  come  as  the  consciously  poor  who 
but  seek  to  be  clothed  and  fed.  And  within  no  proud  or 
greedy  priest  can  bid  the  broken  in  spirit  depart  unpitied,  or 
claim  from  the  destitute  what  his  poverty  cannot  give  ;  for 
the  only  high  priest  of  God's  making  is  there,  and  His  grace 
is  free  and  is  too  precious  to  be  sold  of  heaven  or  bought  of 
man.  And  still  translating  a  symbolical  idea  into  an  eternal 
truth,  the  unity  of  man  in  the  worship  of  God  replaces  the  old 
unity  of  the  elect  people.  Where  men  worship  in  Him  the 

1  i.  29  ;  cf.  ante,  p.  457.  *  iii.  5  ;  ii.  2  ;  iv.  1C. 

8  Gospel  of  John,  ii.  6  ;  iii.  25.  *   i  John  iii.  3. 

5  Rev.  \.\i.  3,  22.  6  Col.  i.  15  ;  ii.  9.         7  John  i.  14. 


AND   THE    NEW    LAW   FOR   MAN          503 

partitions  which  the  ancient  laws  and  ordinances  of  religion 
built  up  to  divide  race  from  race  fall  down,  and  show  man 
standing  face  to  face  with  man,  one  family  before  the  one 
God. 

§  V.      The  Christian  Idea  Interpreted  through  the 
Rabbinical  Laiv 

I.  The  atmosphere  and  the  ideals  of  Rabbinical  were  very 
unlike  those  of  Levitical  Judaism,  and  were  even  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  people  and  the  religion.  While  the  Levitical 
system  perished  with  the  Jewish  state,  the  Rabbinical  law 
survived  it,  as  indeed  it  had  the  better  historical  right  to  do. 
For  the  decalogue  represents  the  most  fundamental  and 
creative  ideas  in  Israel  ;  and  the  most  pious  men  did  not 
cease  to  believe  that  a  regulated  life  was  more  agreeable  to 
God  than  an  elaborated  worship.  They  conceived  Him  to 
be  righteous  rather  than  holy  in  the  Levitical  sense,  a  moral 
Sovereign  who  governed  men  and  States  and  approved 
only  those  who  obeyed  His  will.  Their  law  was  instruction 
rather  than  institution,  and  their  sphere  more  the  school 
than  the  temple.  But  though  their  ideas  and  ends  were 
ethical,  their  means  were  legal,  and  they  imagined  that 
they  could  make  man  moral  by  defining  and  enlarging  the 
rules  by  which  he  ought  to  live.  And  as  these  rules  were 
based  on  two  notions,  that  Israel  was  God's  people,  and  that 
God  was  Israel's  God,  so  their  function  was  to  keep  the 
people  for  God  and  God  for  the  people.  Their  ideal  became, 
therefore,  on  the  religious  side,  an  intense  particularism  ;  and 
on  the  moral  an  obedience  according  to  statutory  regulations, 
though  the  statutes  were  those  of  the  school  rather  than  of 
the  State.  Now  a  morality  which  lives  by  rule  ceases  to  be 
moral  ;  its  root  may  be  piety,  but  its  fruit  is  formalism  ;  the: 
more  complex  life  grows  the  more  numerous  and  vexatious 
become  its  regulations,  more  emphatic  as  to  the  details  and 


504        MAN   REDEEMED   FROM   THE   LAW 

oblivious  as  to  the  major  motives  and  principles  of  life.  And 
this  describes  the  Rabbinical  school  and  the  Pharisaic  sect 
of  Christ's  time  ;  they  showed  how  a  moral  religion,  juristi- 
cally  construed  and  enforced,  ceases  to  be  either  religious  or 
moral.  So  certainly  it  seemed,  after  due  experiment  made, 
to  Saul  of  Tarsus.  He  had  the  feeling  for  conduct  which  had 
distinguished  the  most  pious  of  his  people  and  the  most 
eminent  of  their  prophets;  but  he  found  the  law,  which,  as  God's, 
was  intended  to  make  man  Godlike,  unequal  to  its  work. 
Though  he  so  lived  that  "  as  touching  the  righteousness  which 
is  in  the  law,"1  he  was  "  found  blameless  "  ;  yet  this  righteous- 
ness, which  was  too  unreal  to  satisfy  himself,  he  could  not 
conceive  as  approved  of  God.  So  driven  by  his  imperious 
conscience  for  conduct,  he  turned  to  Christ,  and  there  he  found 
what  he  wanted — deliverance  from  the  law,  a  righteousness 
which  the  law  had  prescribed  but  could  not  give,  and  a  spring 
of  action  which  made  him  a  new  man  before  God.  In  other 
words,  the  Person  who  had  been  made  the  sole  religious  insti- 
tution he  translated  into  a  sovereign  and  sufficient  divine 
law. 

2.  The  principles  which  determined  his  thought  have  been 
formulated  by  himself  in  certain  axiomatic  phrases  and  sen- 
tences. 

i.  "  Christ  redeemed  us  from  the  curse  of  the  law,  having 
become  a  curse  for  us."2  There  is  here  a  personal  experi- 
ence and  a  universal  principle.  The  law  had  been  to  him  a 
burden  too  heavy  to  be  borne,  but  the  death  of  Christ  upon 
the  cross  had  taken  it  away.  Jesus  was  sinless,  yet  the  Jews 
had  said  :  "  We  have  a  law,  and  by  that  law  He  ought  to 
die "  ;  and  the  cross  to  which,  they  condemned  Him  made 
Him  in  its  eye  unclean,  "  for  it  is  written,  Cursed  is  every 
one  that  hangeth  on  a  tree."  But  the  law  which  condemned 
the  holy  was  itself  condemned  ;  for  a  ceremonial  offence, 
which  was  in  the  last  analysis  its  own  infinite  wrong  against 
1  Phil.  iii.  6.  2  Gal.  iii.  13. 


THAT    HE    MAY    LIVE    UNTO   GOD          505 

a  righteous  person,  was  judged  as  if  it  were  His  guilt.  And 
did  not  the  law  that  so  judged  Him  prove  by  its  very  judge- 
ment that  it  had  forgotten  its  moral  character  and  function, 
and  so  could  no  longer  bind  the  conscience  or  claim  to 
govern  the  conduct  ?  And  so  Christ,  by  submitting  to  the 
cross  and  the  curse  it  involved,  redeemed  Paul  from  the  law 
and  made  him  for  ever  the  enemy  of  juristic  and  statutory 
religion.  This  personal  experience  defined,  under  its  nega- 
tive form,  the  positive  function  of  His  death  ;  for  it  meant  that 
the  law  was  superseded,  not  in  the  interests  of  lawlessness,  but 
of  a  more  absolute  obligation  and  'higher  ethical  ideals.  As  to 
the  principle  it  is  too  purely  theological  to  be  here  discussed, 
but  it  may  be  stated  that  so  far  as  law,  taken  in  its  most  uni- 
versal sense,  is  forensic  and  positive,  Christ,  by  having  cnce 
become  a  curse  for  us,  redeems  us  from  its  curse. 

ii.  "  Him  who  knew  no  sin,  He  (God)  made  to  be  sin  on 
our  behalf,  in  order  that  we  might  become  the  righteousness 
of  God  in  Him."  l  The  Pauline  principles  that  meet  in  this 
verse,  and  are  necessary  for  its  interpretation,  are  fundamen- 
tal and  far-reaching  ;  but  its  significance  for  Christianity  as  a 
religion  lies  on  the  surface.  All  worship,  even  where  it  most 
seeks  to  honour  God,  is  designed  to  reconcile  Him  to  man,  or 
to  make  man  more  acceptable  to  Him.  What  makes  recon- 
ciliation necessary  is  man's  sin  and  self-will  ;  what  is  needed  to 
his  acceptability  is  a  righteousness  God  approves.  Out  of 
the  desire  for  reconciliation  all  the  sacrifices  by  which  man 
has  striven  to  win  the  Divine  favour,  have  come  ;  and  out  of 
his  search  after  an  acceptable  righteousness  all  the  rules  and 
orders  and  penances  by  which  he  has  laboured  to  make  him- 
self agreeable  to  Deity,  have  issued.  Now  Paul  here  says,  in 
effect:  "In  the  work  of  reconciliation,  God  has  taken  the 
initiative,  though  in  a  fashion  which  becomes  a  Being  too  holv 
to  tolerate  sin.  He  has  dealt  with  the  sinless  as  if  lie  had 
been  sinful,  allowing  Him  to  bear  'the  contradiction  of 

1  2  Cor.  v.  21. 


506     THE    REDEEMER   IS    THE   LAWGIVER 

sinners,'  to  feel  forsaken  of  God,  and  even  to  taste  death  ;  and 
He  has  done  this  in  order  that  we  who  are  the  sinful  might 
become  possessed  of  the  righteousness  which  God  gives  to  all 
who  are  in  Christ."  The  act  is  absolute,  but  the  result  is  con- 
ditional. God  makes  Christ  to  be  sin,  and  in  this  action, 
though  it  is  done  on  his  behalf,  man  has  no  part ;  but  he  be- 
comes the  righteousness  of  God  only  provided  he  is  so  incor- 
porated with  Christ,  and  Christ  with  him,  that  they  stand 
before  God  as  one  being.  It  is  the  function  of  faith  to  estab- 
lish this  unity,  which  is  spiritual  ;  while  the  unity  by  virtue 
of  which  He  could  be  made  sin  belongs  to  the  nature  which 
embodies  the  will  of  God. 

iii.  The  Christ  who  by  His  Cross  "  redeemed  us  from  the 
curse  of  the  law,"  and  who  was  "  made  sin "  in  order  that 
"  we  might  become  the  righteousness  of  God  in  Him," 
creates  also  in  us  a  new  life  which  He  supplies  with  motives 
and  guides  towards  a  divine  end.  This  function  Paul 
presents  under  three  different  aspects  in  three  most  char- 
acteristic texts. 

(a)  "  What  the  law  could  not  do  in  that  it  was  weak 
through  the  flesh,  God,  sending  His  own  Son  in  the  likeness 
of  sinful  flesh  and  for  sin,  condemned  sin  in  the  flesh,  that 
the  righteous  demand  of  the  law  (TO  SiKaiw^a  rov  vo^ou) 
mi^ht  be  fulfilled  in  us,  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh  but 

o 

after  the  Spirit." :  Paul  is  no  libertine,  no  lover  of  licence; 
he  renounced  the  law  because  it  had  failed  to  make  man 
righteous,  and  he'embraced  Christ  because  through  Him  the 
requirements  of  the  law  can  be  fulfilled.  God  is  throughout 
the  active  subject  ;  He  sends  His  Son,  lie  determines  the 
likeness  the  Son  is  to  bear  and  the  reason  for  it ;  He  "  con- 
demns sin  in  the  flesh  "  ;  and  His  is  the  end  to  be  realized, 
which  is  one  with  the  purpose  of  the  law  and  due  to  the 
law's  failure  to  fulfil  its  purpose. 

(/3)  "  The  love  of  Christ  constraineth  us,  because   we  thus 
1  Rom.  viii.  3,  4. 


THE    PERSONALIZED    IDEAL   A    LAW      507 

judge  £hat  one  died  for  all,  therefore  all  died ;  and  He 
died  for  all,  in  order  that  they  who  live  should  no  longer 
live  unto  themselves,  but  unto  Him  who  died  for  them  and 
rose  again."  1  The  love  of  Christ  is  said  to  "  constrain,"  i.e. 
so  to  shut  up  and  confine  the  stream  of  life  as  to  determine 
it  and  all  its  energies  towards  a  given  end,  because  of  a 
twofold  judgement — (i.)  the  identity  of  Christ's  death  with 
our  death,  His  as  unmerited  being  undertaken  on  our  behalf, 
and  ours  as  merited  being  realized  in  His  ;  and  (ii.)  the 
purpose  of  His  death,  not  that  we  may  be  relieved  from 
penalty,  but  that  we  may  live  unto  Him,  i.e.  He  as  end 
was  to  be  the  new  law  governing  life.  The  doctrine  of  the 
text  is  here  neither  explained  nor  defended  nor  criticized, 
though  it  is  obvious  that  no  criticism  based  on  the  atomism 

o 

or  rigorous  individualism  of  the  race  could  here  be  relevant. 
Paul  does  not  write  as  one  who  thought  that  the  race  had 
no  responsibility  for  the  individual,  or  the  individual  no 
existence  in  the  race ;  but  as  one  who  conceives  man  as 
a  unity,  and  this  unity  as  impersonated  and  realized  in 
Christ.  He  is  the  personalized  ideal  of  humanity  ;  what  He 
does  or  suffers  man  does  and  endures.  To  live  unto  Him 
is,  therefore,  to  Paul  to  live  for  the  service  of  man,  to  work 
and  suffer  and,  if  need  be,  die  as  He  did  for  the  saving 
of  humanity,  actual  and  ideal. 

(7)  "  I  have  been  crucified  with  Christ,  and  it  is  no  longer 
I  that  live  but  Christ  liveth  in  me."2  This  illustrates  the 
first  text,  and  states  in  the  form  of  a  personal  experi- 
ence the  idea  expressed  in  the  second.  The  old  man,  the 
man  who  lived  under  the  law  and  realized  through  the 
flesh  all  its  weakness,  who  hated,  persecuted  and  killed  in 
its  name,  is  dead,  "  crucified  with  Christ."  .And  this  dead 
man  knows  no  resurrection,  his  death  is  eternal;  and  the 
new  life  which  dwells  in  the  old  form  is  not  his  own  but 
Christ's,  "who  loved  me  and  gave  Himself  for  me." 
1  2  Cor.  v.  14,  15.  2  Gal.  ii.  20. 


5o8  THE    NEW   LAW    IS    LOVE 

§  VI.    Love  of  Christ  the  new  Law 

I.  Paul  thus,  by  means  of  his  larger  philosophy,  assigns 
to  Christ  a  much  greater  place  in  religion  than  the  writer 
who  construed  Him  through  the  Levitical  categories.  He 
is  not  only  an  institution  for  worship,  but  a  law  for  the 
government  of  man  ;  He  creates  at  once  the  right  relation 
to  God  and  the  true  spirit  of  worship,  evokes  the  humanity 
latent  in  man  and  realizes  the  proper  order  of  society. 
The  ideal  He  is  He  inspires  man  to  become.  There  is 
nothing  so  remarkable  in  the  whole  history  of  human 
thought  as  this  interpretation  of  a  person  not  only  into  a 
universal  religious  institution  but  also  into  an  absolute  law  at 
once  moral  and  religious  ;  and  there  is  something  miraculous 
in  the  way  in  which  the  interpretation  has  been  realized,  the 
simplicity  of  the  means  forming  such  a  contrast  to  the  im- 
mensity of  the  achievement.  Enthusiasms  seldom  outlive 
the  generation  that  sees  them  born,  and  a  dead  enthusiasm, 
save  as  the  affectation  of  a  sect  or  a  set,  returns  to  life  no 
more.  But  to  one  enthusiasm  which  appeals  to  no  earthly 
or  sordid  passion,  man  has  for  sixty  generations  been  faith- 
ful ;  it  is  the  enthusiasm  which  Paul  terms  "  the  love  of 
Christ."  Love  is  as  old  as  man,  and  so  Christ  did  not 
make  it,  but  by  consenting  to  become  its  object  He  gave 
it  a  new  character  and  new  qualities,  a  new  function  and 
new  ends.  Love  indeed  is  more  native  to  man  than  the  air 
he  breathes,  for  he  breathes  the  air  in  common  with  the 
animals,  but  the  love  he  knows  is  the  distinctive  note  of 
his  humanity  It  waits  his  coming  into  the  world,  it  weeps 
his  leaving  it :  it  ministers  every  moment  to  his  most 
common  and  crying  needs.  Through  the  gates  of  its 
glorious  romance  we  all  enter  into  the  larger  day  ;  at 
its  touch  the  youth  blossoms  into  the  man  ;  the  maiden 
blushes  into  the  woman  ;  the  sorrows  of  the  mother  are 
transmuted  into  a  ministry  of  joy  ;  the  labour  of  the  father 


WHICH    CHRIST    HAS    TRANSFIGURED    509 

ceases  to  be  a  burden  and  his  very  toil  grows  sweet.  Before 
Christ,  as  since,  poets  sang  of  its  pleasures  and  its  pains, 
its  divine  madness,  its  delirious  delights,  its  infinite  longing, 
its  lasting  bitterness  or  its  abiding  peace.  In  its  honour 
or  to  its  shame  tragedies  have  been  written  telling  of  the 
lives  it  has  made  or  marred,  the  struggles  with  destiny  it 
has  provoked,  the  deaths  it  has  braced  men  to  die,  the 
lives  it  has  persuaded  men  to  live.  And  it  was  this  love, 
so  common  and  large,  so  pitiful  and  tragic,  so  commanding 
the  destiny  which  brings  ruin  or  glory  to  the  man,  that 
Christ  took  and  lifted  into  a  transcendent  ethical  power. 
The  love  which  the  poet  had  praised  was  sensuous  in  its 
form  and  personal  in  its  character  and  aims  ;  it  was  a 
passion  for  possession  ;  it  might  desire  to  merge  one's  being 
in  another's,  or  rather  another's  being  in  one's  own,  but 
it  was  in  all  its  forms  a  passion  to  possess.  But  out  of 
this  love  Christ  made  the  most  self- forgetful  of  forces,  a 
law  that  moved  man  towards  righteousness  and  all  be- 
nevolence. We  call  it  by  many  names,  but  no  name  is 
equal  to  all  its  activities  and  attributes.  It  is  an  enthusiasm 
for  humanity,  for  the  redemption  of  the  fallen,  for  the 
Tightening  of  the  wronged,  for  building  up  the  ruined,  for 
beautifying  the  wasted  ;  but  however  named,  it  remains 
a  passion  to  serve  man  for  love  of  Christ.  And  He  in- 
vested this  love  with  the  qualities  that  made  it  not  an 
occasional  and  fitful  but  a  constant  energy,  an  invariable 
moral  dynamic.  It  did  not  die  on  the  Cross,  but  became 
immortal  with  Him,  a  permanent  factor  of  amelioration 
which  had  its  continued  being  guaranteed  by  His.  Hence 
it  is  a  love  which,  like  the  priesthood  of  Melchizedek,  stands 
in  an  order  by  itself.  The  love  which  is  as  old  as  man 
is  embalmed  in  his  literatures,  but  we  embalm  only  the 
dead.  At  the  dawn  of  Greek  letters  we  see  Penelope 
sitting  in  her  hall  in  rocky  Ithaca  surrounded  by  the  hungry 
and  urgent  wooers,  while  the  husband  of  her  youth  tarries, 


510      THE    DEAD   LOVES    OF   LITERATURE 

wandering  through  many  lands  and  learning  from  many 
men.  The  wooers  she  cannot  love,  and  none  of  them  will  she 
wed,  for  her  heart  is  with  the  far-travelled  Odysseus  who 
comes  not,  though  well  she  knows  that  he  is  sure  to  return. 
To  calm  the  strife  of  the  suitors  she  promises  to  wed  when 
the  web  she  weaves  so  openly  by  day  is  woven  ;  but  by 
night  she  unweaves  what  she  had  woven  by  day  that  the  end 
may  not  be  till  the  day  breaks  which  shall  bring  the  wanderer 
home.  But  though  the  love  of  Penelope  for  Odysseus  touches 
the  imagination  of  the  living,  yet  it  is  but  a  dead  love. 
We  love  the  poetry  that  speaks  of  it,  the  stately  measures 
that  linger  in  the  ear  like  the  music  of  a  celestial  voice ; 
but  what  is  loved  is  literature,  not  a  passion  that  so  holds 
the  heart  as  to  command  the  conscience  and  regulate  the 
life.  And  Homer  stands  here  for  all  Greek,  nay,  for  all 
ancient  literature  ;  it  is  but  a  splendid  tomb  which  Genius 
has  built  as  a  monument  to  love,  that  the  memory  of  it  may 
survive  death  and  that  it  may  become  the  admiration  and 
joy  of  later  men.  And  as  with  ancient  so  with  modern 
literature  ;  it  begins  to  be  when  the  stern  and  solitary  soul 
of  Dante  breaks  into  responsive  music  at  the  touch  of  the 
most  gentle  lady  Beatrice.  We  descend  with  him  the  circles 
of  his  "  Inferno "  ;  we  struggle  up  the  steep  and  arduous 
mount  of  the  "  Purgatorio  "  ;  we  look  through  his  eyes  and 
behold  afar  off  the  great  throne  of  light,  the  home  of  the 
blessed,  to  which  his  eyes  and  ours  are  drawn  ;  and  what 
compels  him  to  go  and  us  to  follow  is  the  hope  that  he 
may  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  most  gentle  lady  in  the  paradise 
where  she  dwells  in  eternal  peace.  But  while  we  suffer 
with  Dante  the  pangs  of  a  love  that  though  it  cannot  be 
told  yet  will  not  be  denied  the  comfort  of  speech,  still  the 
story  he  tells  and  we  hear  is  of  a  love  so  dead  that  no  will 
can  revive  it.  The  literature  which  is  its  shrine  appeals  to  the 
imagination  that  seeks  culture,  but  the  love  within  the  shrine 
is  but  dust  and  ashes  which  no  voice  can  ever  charm  back 


THE    LIVING    LOVE    IN    RELIGION          511 

into  life.  But(  the  love  of  Christ  is  not  a  dead  love,  en- 
tombed in  a  classical  literature,  it  lives  and  quickens  and 
creates  as  no  human  thing  can  do.  Age  does  not  \vither 
its  ineffable  charm,  nor  does  the  lapse  of  time  exhaust  its 
exuberant  energies.  It  has  created  many  literatures  in  many 
tongues  ;  lyrics  that  express  a  passion  that  only  loss  of  self 
in  the  eternal  love  can  satisfy  ;  epics  that  express  the  apostasy 
and  departure  of  the  soul  from  God,  its  wandering  through 
many  deserts  of  sin,  where  its  thirst  is  deep  and  its  pains 
severe,  until  it  returns  humbled  and  penitent  to  the  Father's 
feet  ;  tragedies  that  describe  the  struggles  of  the  will  that 
would  fain  have  followed  the  lust  of  the  eye  and  the  pride 
of  life,  but  could  not  for  the  grace  that  hedged  it  round 
and  drew  it  back  to  the  home  it  had  forsaken  but  could 
not  forget.  Twenty  centuries  have  passed  since  "  they  took 
Jesus  and  laid  Him  in  a  new  tomb,"  but  love  of  Him  they 
did  not  bury,  for  it  never  died  ;  and  ever}'  day  between 
this  and  then  it  has  proved  itself  alive  by  the  conquests  it 
has  made,  compelling  men  to  renounce  loved  vices  and 
sending  gentle  women  into  the  loathly  slum,  the  deadly 
camp,  or  wherever  man  needed  the  hand  of  gracious  help- 
fulness. This  is  the  one  love  which  abides  while  the  lovers 
die,  for  it  is  possessed  of  immortal  youth  and  the  inex- 
haustible energies  which  are  born  of  God. 

2.  But  the  love  which  is  thus  immortal  has  also  the  quality 
of  sufficiency  for  its  work.  There  is  an  ethical  counterpart  to 
the  correlation  of  the  physical  forces.  The  vision  which  rises 
before  the  imagination  of  the  physicist,  when  he  sees  his 
atoms  falling  through  a  space  which  he  thinks  of  as  otherwise 
vacant,  and  which  knows  no  light  of  sun  or  star,  is  impres- 
sive, lie  sees  them  marshalled  in  their  innumerable  hosts, 
not  as  an  unordered  heap,  but  as  a  disciplined  army,  with  its 
laws  given  in  the  form  and  weight  of  every  separate  unit. 
In  obedience  to  these  laws  he  sees  them  pass  through  infinite 
evolutions  and  involutions,  now  massing,  now  dissolving  their 


512      CORRELATION   OF    ETHICAL   FORCES 

columns,  yet  ever  marching  breast  forward  across  limitless 
fields  of  space  and  through  unmeasured  periods  of  time  to  the 
creation  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth.  And  if  the  eye  of  the 
seer  of  science  be  not  weary,  he  may  note  how  the  cycle  of 
change  continues,  and  how  the  same  force,  unhasting,  un- 
resting, one,  manifold,  in  form  transient,  in  essence  perma- 
nent, working  through  incalculable  ages,  appears  now  on  the 
cooling  mass  as  rock  and  vapour,  as  land  and  water,  as 
plant  and  animal,  or  now  as  all  that  makes  the  endless 
panorama  of  earth  and  sea  and  sky,  and  now  as  the 
succession  of  organs  and  organisms  that  constitute  our  living 
world. l  But  more  marvellous  than  this  correlation  and 
ceaseless  conversion  of  physical  forces  are  the  correlation 
and  the  persistent  permutations  of  the  ethical  energy  which 
we  call  the  love  of  Christ.  It  began  to  be  in  Him  and  with 
Him,  and  without  increase  or  decrease  it  took  shape  in  the 
men  He  made  apostles  ;  then,  without  any  loss  of  momentum 
or  intensity,  changed  its  form  and  appeared  as  sub-apostolic 
men,  apologists,  fathers,  and  churches  which  rose  round  the 
shores  of  the  tideless  Mediterranean  ;  then  as  missionaries  who 
wandered  through  many  lands,  creating  new  peoples  in  the 
Syrian  desert,  in  central  Europe,  on  the  bleak  shores  of  the 
northern  seas,  and  in  furthest  Asia.  And  dispersion  did  not 
dissipate  it,  for  the  lapse  of  time  has  not  exhausted  its  energy  ; 
on  the  contrary,  expenditure  has  only  seemed  to  increase  its 
potency  and  the  capacity  for  conversion  into  forms  still  more 
infinitely  varied.  New  peoples  it  has  made  have  replaced 
the  old,  have  colonized  unknown  continents,  and  made  them 
as  fertile  as  their  own,  building  up  societies  and  States,  which 
illustrate  anew  the  power  of  this  marvellous  love.  And 
so  it  seems  as  if  this  gracious  ethical  energy  is  a  force  as 
incapable  of  perishing  as  it  is  capable  of  accomplishing  the 
work  it  has  been  charged  to  perform. 

1  Ante,  p.  354.     A  similar  figure  is  employed,  though  for  a  different 
purpose. 


LOVE    NECESSARY    TO   SERVICE  513 

3.  And  without  this  love  man  is  unfitted  for  the  service  of 
his  kind.  For  man  to  be  served  must  be  loved,  but  the 
supreme  difficulty  is  to  love  the  men  who  most  need  our 
service.  Hate  is  easy,  and  where  we  hate  it  is  both  agreeable 
and  natural  to  wish  to  injure.  Where  we  do  not  love  we  feel 
no  need  to  pity  or  to  spare.  Milton's  Satan  knew  sin,  knew 
how  terrible  it  was  to  himself,  making  of  him  a  hell,  from 
which  he  saw  no  way  of  escape.  But  though  he  knew  sin 
as  the  most  terrible  of  all  possible  miseries,  yet  he  had  so 
little  pity  for  man,  and  he  so  wished  to  spite  God,  that  he 
crossed  chaos,  passed  sin  and  death,  and  assumed  forms  dis- 
agreeable to  his  proud  spirit,  that  he  might  tempt  man  to 
become  even  as  he  was — a  hell  with  hells  beneath  so  low 
and  deep,  as  to  make  the  hell  then  suffered  seem  a  heaven. 
Hate  of  God  made  Satan  pitiless  to  man,  and  his  ruin  a 
thing  from  which  it  was  foolish  to  shrink.  And  all  seduction 
is  devilish  because  it  is  pitiless  ;  it  never  springs  from  affection, 
ever  from  the  lust  that  is  self-indulgence.  It  has  no  imagina- 
tion to  see  the  misery  it  causes,  has  only  the  brutal  passion 
which  must  be  gratified  that  the  baser  self  may  be  pleased. 
On  the  other  hand  the  love  of  Christ  creates  not  simply  the 
<pity  that  dare  not  harm,  but  also  the  grace  that  must  save. 
It  is  here  indeed  that  we  discover  the  most  characteristic 
quality  in  the  love  of  Christ.  To  love  Him  is  to  love  man. 
This  is  a  function  as  unique  as  it  is  high,  for  he  who  despises 
cannot  bless,  nor  can  he  who  is  despised  be  blessed.  Hate 
is  not  a  thing  that  need  be  spoken  ;  it  is  understood  without 
words,  discerned  without  acts.  It  has  onlv  to  be  felt  in 
order  to  be  known,  and  to  disqualify  the  man  who  feels  it 
from  serving  the  man  who  knows  that  it  is  there.  And  so  love 
is  necessary  to  the  service  of  man.  Hut  then  there  are  multi- 
tudes of  men  it  is  impossible  to  love.  An  abstract  sin  need 
provoke  no  passion,  but  concrete  sin,  which  means  the  actual 
sinner,  cannot  fail  to  breed  dislike.  Hypocrisy  is  what  every 
honest  soul  hates,  but  love  of  the  hypocrite  is  less  possible 

F.C.R.  33 


514  LOVE    OVERCOMING   EVIL 

still.  A  lie  no  man  can  love,  and  a  liar  is  worse  and  less 
lovable  than  his  lie.  But  Christ  makes  possible  what  these 
necessitated  antipathies  most  sternly  forbid.  For  to  love 
Him  is  to  love  all  mankind.  He  is  not  a  single  person  ;  He 
is  to  those  who  know  Him  collective  man,  who  is  loved  in 
the  love  of  Him.  Yet  the  man  who  is  loved  in  Him  is  loved, 
in  spite  of  his  actual  and  radical  evil,  as  a  man  capable  of 
conversion,  with  this  capability  made  everywhere  and  always 
possible  of  realization.  And  it  is  this  love,  not  of  the  sin, 
but  of  the  hidden  and  possible  saint  in  the  sinner,  that  makes 
the  love  of  Christ  so  essentially  ameliorative,  a  passion  to 
seek  as  well  as  to  save.  And  what  does  the  immortal 
necessity  and  sufficiency  of  His  love  prove  save  that  the 
experience  of  man  has  come  to  confirm  the  truth  discovered 
by  the  experience  of  Paul,  that  the  love  of  Christ  was 
the  law  of  God  compelling  men  to  obey  Him  and  serve 
mankind? 

Ed  io  udi'  :  "  Per  intelletto  umano, 
E  per  autoritadi  a  lui  concorde, 
De'  tuoi  amori  a  Dio  i^uarda  il  soprano. 

M.i  di'  ancor.  se  tu  semi  altre  corde 

Tirarti  verso  lui,  si  clie  tu  suone  I 

Con  quanti  denti  questo  amor  ti  morde." 

Non  fu  latente  la  santa  intenzione 

I  >e!l'  aquila  di  CkiSTO.  anzi  m'  accorsi 
Dove  volea  menar  mia  professione. 

Pero  ricominciai  :  "  Tutti  quei  inorsi  ; 
Che  posson  far  lo  cor  volger  a  Dio, 
Alia  mia  caritate  son  concorsi  ; 

Che  1'essere  del  mondo,  el'esser  mio, 
La  morte  ch'  ei  sostenne  perch'  io  viva, 
E  quel  che  spera  ogni  feclel,  com'  io, 

Con  la  predetta  conoscenza  viva, 

Tratto  nv  hanno  del  mar  dell'  amor  torto, 
E  del  diritto  m'  ban  posto  alia  riva 

Le  fronde  onde  s'infronda  tutto  1'orto 
Dell'  ortolano  eterno,  am'  io  cotanto, 
Quanto  da  lui  a  lor  di  bene  £  porto." 

— DANTE. 


We  read  in  our  Books  of  a  nice  Athenian,  being  entertained  in  a  place 
by  one  given  to  Hospitality,  finding  anon  that  another  was  received  with 
the  like  courtesie,  and  then  a  third,  growing  very  angry,  u  I  thought," 
said  he,  u  that  I  had  found  here  £fi>d>j>n,  but  I  have  found  rmv^oxtiov  ; 
I  looked  for  a  Friend's  house,  but  I  am  fallen  into  an  Inne  to  entertain 
all  Coiners,  rather  than  a  lodging  for  some  private  and  especial  Friends." 
Let  it  not  offend  any  that  I  have  made  Christianity  rather  an  Inne  to 
receive  all,  than  a  private  house  to  receive  some  few. — JOHN  HALES. 

Why  measure  we  God  by  our  selves,  but  because  we  are  led  with  gay 
shews,  and  goodly  things,  and  think  it  is  so  with  God  ?  Seneca  reports,  that 
a  Pantotnitnus,  a  Poppet-player  and  Dancer  in  Rome,  because  he  pleased 
the  People  well,  was  wont  to  go  up  every  day  into  the  Capitol,  and  prac- 
tise his  Art,  and  dance  before  Jupiter,  and  thought  he  did  the  god  a 
great  pleasure.  Beloved,  in  many  things  we  are  like  unto  this  Poppet- 
player,  and  do  much  measure  God  by  the  People,  by  the  World. 

— JOHN  HALES. 

The  Divinity  alwaies  enjoies  itself  and  its  own  Infinite  perfections, 
seeing  it  is  that  Eternall  and  stable  Sun  of  goodness  that  neither  rises 
nor  sets,  is  neither  eclipsed  nor  can  receive  any  encrease  of  light  and 
beauty.  Hence  the  Divine  Love  is  never  attended  with  those  turbulent 
passions,  perturbations,  or  wrestlings  within  it  self  of  hear,  Desire,  di'itj, 
An^cr,  or  any  such  like,  whereby  our  Love  is  wont  to  explicate  and 
unfold  its  affection  towards  its  Object.  But  as  tlie  Divine  ].ove  is  per- 
petually most  infinitely  ardent  and  potent,  so  it  is  alwaies  calm  and 
serene,  unchangeable,  having  no  such  ebbings  and  rlowings,  no  such 
diversity  of  stations  and  retrogradations  as  that  Love  hath  in  us  which 
ari-eth  from  the  weakness  of  our  Understandings,  that  doe  not  present 
things  to  us  alwaies  in  the  same  Orient  lustre  and  beauty  :  neither  we 
nor  any  other  mundane  thing  (all  which  are  in  a  perpetual  tlux)  are 
alwaies  the  same.— JOHN  SMITH,  the  Platonist. 

Dem  gegenuber  eroffnet  sich  uns  durch  den  jetzt  gewonnenen  Begriff 
dcs  Anfangs  auch  der  Emblick  in  die  Moglichkeit  ernes  Fortgangs  dcs 
1'roccs^es  der  Menschwerdung,  Hues  solchen  Fortgangs.  welcher  sich, 
wic  die  Idee  der  Sohnmen.ichheit  es  furdcit,  im  lit  in  eineni  ein/elnen 
/citpiuirte  der  Menschenge.schichte,  sondern  in  alien  /eiten,  nirlit  ;in 
e'ner  em/elncn  1'erson,  Mindern  an  dem  gesammlen  menschlichen 
Geschlecht  vollzieht. — WF.ISSE. 


o  fj.ev  817  Q(6s,  £>S7T€p  KOI  6  ira\ai.bs  \6yos,  dpxfjv  re  KOL  TeXfvrfjv  KOI  p.f(ra 
TWV  ovrcav  dirdvTtov  e^o>v,  tvdeiq  TrepaiWi  Kara  (pvcriv  Trepnropeud/iefor. 

— PLATO. 

'EK  Atos  apx&>/ze(r$a,  TOV  ovSeTror'  av8pes  f5>p.tv 
apprjTov,  p,e(rTal  8e  Ato  j  iracrai  fiev  ayuiai, 
Trocrat  8'  dv6po)TTO>v  dyopat,  /iieorij  Se  BdXatrcra, 
Kai  Xt/ifVes,  TrdvTT)  8e  Aioc  Kf\pr^fjifda  iravres' 
TOV  yap  KCU  yevos  ecr/Mev. — ARATUS. 

Such  a  sort  of  deity  as  should  shut  up  itself,  and  be  reclused  from  all 
converse  with  men,  would  leave  us  as  disfurnished  of  an  object  of  reli- 
gion, and  would  render  a  temple  on  earth  as  vain  a  thing,  as  if  there 
were  none  at  all.  It  were  a  being  not  to  be  worshipped,  nor  with  any 
propriety  to  be  called  God,  more  (in  some  respect  less)  than  an  image  or 
statue.  We  might  with  as  rational  design  worship  for  God  what  were 
scarce  worthy  to  be  called  the  shadow  of  a  man,  as  dedicate  temples  to 
a  wholly  unconversable  deity.  That  is  such  a  one  as  not  only  will  not 
vouchsafe  to  converse  with  men,  but  that  cannot  admit  it ;  or  whose 
nature  were  altogether  incapable  of  such  converse. — JOHN  HOWE. 

For  whatsoever  the  wisest  men  in  the  world,  in  all  nations  and  religions, 
did  agree  upon,  as  most  excellent  in  itself,  and  of  greatest  power  to  make 
political  or  future  and  immaterial  felicities,  all  that,  and  much  more,  the 
holy  Jesus  adopted  into  his  law  :  for  they  receiving  sparks  or  single 
irradiations  from  the  regions  of  light,  or  else  having  fair  tapers  shining 
indeed  excellently  in  representations  and  expresses  of  morality,  were  all 
involved  and  swallowed  up  into  the  body  of  light,  the  sun  of  righteous- 
ness. Christ's  discipline  was  the  breviary  of  all  the  wisdom  of  the  best 
men,  and  a  fair  copy  and  transcript  of  his  Father's  wisdom. 

—JEREMY  TAYLOR. 

Christianity  has  materially  contributed  to  call  forth  the  idea  of  the  unity 
of  the  human  race  and  has  thus  tended  to  exercise  a  favourable  influence 
on  the  humanization  of  nations  in  their  morals,  manners,  and  institutions. 
Although  closely  interwoven  with  the  earliest  doctrines  of  Christianity, 
this  idea  of  humanity  met  with  only  a  slow  and  tardy  recognition,  for  at 
the  time  when  the  new  faith  was  raised  at  Byzantium,  from  political 
motives,  to  be  the  established  religion  of  the  State,  its  adherents  were 
already  deeply  involved  in  miserable  party  dissensions,  whilst  intercourse 
with  distant  nations  was  impeded,  and  the  foundations  of  the  empire 
were  shaken  in  many  directions  by  external  assaults.  Even  the  personal 
freedom  of  entire  races  of  men  long  found  no  protection  in  Christian 
states  from  ecclesiastical  landowners  and  corporate  bodies. 

— ALEXANDER  VON  HUMBOLDT. 


516 


PART   III 

THE   RELIGION    OF   CHRIST  AND   THE    IDEAL  OF 
RELIGION 


WE  have  reached  the  point  where  our  two  main  lines 
of  analysis  and  argument  coalesce.  The  First  Book, 
which  was  concerned  with  the  mind  and  purpose  of  God  as 
expressed  in  Nature  and  in  the  history  of  Man,  culminated 
in  a  discussion  as  to  religions,  local  and  universal,  and  as  to 
the  relation  between  those  founded  and  their  founders.  The 
Second  Book  has  been  so  far  occupied  with  the  persons  and 
processes  concerned  in  the  founding  of  the  Christian  religion  ; 
but  its  argument  is  still  incomplete.  We  have  yet  to  see 
how  their  ideal  became  actual,  to  ascertain  whether  it  has 
qualities  or  attributes  by  virtue  of  which  it  may  claim  to 
be  the  only  really  universal  religion.  But  before  this  can  be 
attempted  we  must  refer  to  certain  introductory  questions. 

i.  Terms  like  "founder"  and  "founded"  need  to  be  em- 
ployed with  caution.  Strictly  speaking,  religions  are  not 
made,  they  grow  ;  for  growth  is  the  process  which  life  follows 
when  it  builds  up  an  organism  for  its  own  inhabitation  and 
enlargement.  Opposed  to  growth  is  the  process  we  may  call 
contrivance  or  manufacture,  which  is  represented  in  religion 
by  Syncretism,  or  the  attempt  by  the  conscious  selection  and 
adjustment  of  old  materials  to  create  a  new  cult  or  svstem. 
Xow  this  process  has  been  known  in  both  ancient  and 
modern  times,  the  age  in  which  Christianity  was  born 


5i8      CHRISTIANITY    NOT   A    SYNCRETISM 

being  particularly  familiar  with  it.  There  were  Romans  who 
affected  to  think  of  the  East  as  religious  and  wise,  of  Egypt 
as  venerable  and  mysterious  ;  and  it  became  a  Roman  fashion 
to  seek  from  the  strange  deities  and  rites  of  the  orient  re- 
plenishment for  the  exhausted  native  sources  of  inspiration. 
But  Syncretism  in  religion,  like  eclecticism  in  philosophy,  is 
a  sign  of  decadence,  for  it  creates  nothing  that  outlives  the 
age  or  the  coterie  that  gave  it  birth.  It  signifies  that  mind, 
fallen  into  conscious  impotence  and  hopelessness,  has  turned 
its  back  upon  the  future  and  its  face  to  the  past  ;  and, 
despairing  of  producing  or  achieving  anything,  has  begun  to 
call  upon  vanished  men  and  systems  for  principles  which 
may  help  it  to  live.  The  mood  is,  as  a  rule,  self-conscious 
and  cynical  as  well  as  despondent,  and  so  the  formulae  it 
borrows  it  builds,  usually,  to  the  music  of  a  little  disdainful 
and  finical  criticism,  into  a  house  of  consolation  and  amuse- 
ment rather  than  a  temple  of  truth  and  worship. 

ii.  The  last  religion  we  could  describe  as  a  Syncretism 
is  the  Christian,  and  that  for  many  reasons,  though  it  will 
be  enough  to  mention  here  two  :  (a)  its  founders  were  too 
completely  ignorant  of  other  theologies  and  philosophies  to 
be  affected  by  them  ;  and  (/3)  it  was  not  an  articulated  skele- 
ton but  a  living  organism,  carrying  within  itself  the  principle 
of  life.  This  does  not  mean  that  it  was  without  relation  to 
the  past,  for  without  the  persons,  ideas,  customs  and  influences 
it  inherited,  it  never  could  have  been  ;  nor  that  it  was  iso- 
lated from  the  present,  for  if  it  had  been  untouched  by  living 
forces,  it  could  not  have  reached  living  men.  But  it  means 
that  it  behaved  as  a  living  being  behaves,  who,  while  the  issue 
of  a  long  ancestry,  yet  gro\vs  by  transmuting  into  his  own 
substance  the  matter  his  environment  supplies.  In  other 
words,  the  religion  grew  because  it  lived,  and  it  lived  because 
it  carried  within  it  an  immanent  and  architectonic  idea,  which 
governed  it  and  yet  was  essentially  its  own.  That  idea  was 
the  belief  it  held  concerning  Jesus  Christ,  which  double  name 


BUT   A    LIVING    ORGANISM  519 

denoted  at  once  the  historical  person  who  was  the  first 
Christian  and  the  transcendental  ideal  which  had  trans- 
formed God  and  religion,  man  and  history. 

iii.  The  action  of  this  idea  upon  the  religion  may  best  be 
discussed  under  three  heads  :  (a)  the  people,  or  the  medium 
in  which  the  religion  had  to  live ;  (/3)  the  beliefs  that  made  it, 
especially  the  belief  which  determines  all  others,  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Deity  it  worships  ;  and  (7)  the  worship  it  offers 
Him,  or  the  methods  it  follows  to  please  Him  and  do 
Him  honour,  to  cultivate  the  obedience  and  the  virtues  He 
approves. 


CHAPTER   I 

THE   PERSON   OF   CHRIST   AND   THE   PEOPLE   OF   THE 
RELIGION 

§  I.    The  Problems  to  be  Solved 

i.  r  I  ^HE  problems  here  are  most  complex,  (a)  The  re- 
-I-  ligion  could  not  become  an  historical  fact,  still  less 
a  social  force  in  the  bosom  of  humanity,  without  a  people,  and 
a  people  was  exactly  what  did  not  exist  and  what  had, 
therefore,  to  be  created.  But  creation  is  not  a  process  which 
art  can  accomplish,  and  in  this  case  there  was  nothing  in  the 
past  experience  of  man  to  show  how  it  could  be  done.  (/3)  If 
the  religion  was  to  be  universal,  the  people  must  not  be  local 
or  capable  of  being  localized  ;  for  if  it  were,  the  very  degree 
in  which  it  was  identified  with  one  family  or  tribe  would  make 
it  alien  to  other  races.  (7)  If  a  people  is  to  have  a  single  re- 
ligion, they  must  have  the  homogeneous  consciousness  which 
not  only  allows,  but  demands  for  its  expression,  identity  of 
beliefs  and  worship  ;  but  this  had  not  as  yet  been  realized, 
save  under  the  magic  influences  of  a  common  home  and 
place.  (S)  A  religion  that  would  belong  to  all  men  must  be 
without  family  customs,  tribal  institutions,  or  a  national 
polity  ;  for  unless  it  could  live  without  these  things,  it  had 
not  learned  to  transcend  the  limitations  of  kinship  and  caste, 
language  and  colour. 

But  while  the  immanent  potentialities  that  create  religion 
are  universal,  the  forms  it  assumes,  whether  in  belief  or  in 
worship,  are  determined  by  the  empirical  causes, — physical. 


RELIGION    AS    A    LOCAL   INSTITUTION    521 

ethical,  intellectual,  political,  and  economical, — which  govern 
the  social  evolution  as  a  whole.  Thus  the  history  of  a  re- 
ligion is  but  a  special  branch  of  its  people's  history,  not  to 
be  construed  unless  they  are  conceived  as  a  sort  of  colossal 
personality,  continuous  in  being,  though  multitudinous  in 
experience.  The  forces  that  evoke  the  energy  to  live  develop 
the  will  to  believe  ;  and  where  the  forces  are  uniform  the 
beliefs  constitute  a  unity.  Hence  the  agencies  that  tend  to 
make  a  state  local,  tend  to  make  its  religion  the  same  ;  and  so 
rigorous  has  the  relation  between  these  two  ever  been  that 
while  no  being  has  been  more  migratory  than  man,  no  re- 
ligion born  with  or  within  a  nation  has  been  either  able  or 
willing  to  change  its  home.  For  outside  the  place  of  its  birth 
it  would  lose  not  only  its  historical  continuity,  but  its  per- 
sonal identity.  Hence  the  migration  of  customs,  beliefs,  and 
myths  is  one  thing,  and  the  migration  of  religions  is  a  different 
thing  altogether.  Men,  or  even  tribes,  may  borrow  a  term  or 
imitate  an  institution,  but  a  structure  which  has  been  built 
up  by  a  multitude  of  local  agencies,  operating  through  more 
generations  than  man  can  reckon,  must  stand  where  it  has 
been  built,  and  can  be  removed  only  by  being  taken  to  pieces. 
And  so  the  religion  a  people  has  made  must  remain  that 
people's,  and  cannot  become  another's,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  its  transference  would  involve  the  uprooting  of  the  whole 
historical  order  and  consciousness  of  one  race  and  their  im- 
plantation in  the  soul  of  another. 

2.  But  these  were  not  the  only  difficulties  which  the 
Christian  religion  had  to  overcome;  of  a  different  but  still 
more  radical  order  was  this  :  it  had  to  create  the  people  it 
needed  out  of  old  materials,- ancient  races,  who  had  lived 
in  ever\'  kind  and  variety  of  state,  who  had  been  born  in 
countries  distant  from  each  other  and  reared  under  different 
climates,  and  who  had  been  accustomed  to  religions  ranging 
from  the  most  austere  monotheism  to  the  most  indulgent 
polytheism.  It  found  no  virgin  consciousness  in  which  to 


522  HOW    TO    UNITE    RACIAL   DIFFERENCES 

sow  the  seed  of  its  ideas  and  usages,  but  had  to  form  its 
people  out  of  men  who  had  no  national  unity,  no  common 
ancestry,  no  affinity  of  blood,  speech  or  experience  ;  in  a 
word,  nothing  in  their  past  to  lead  them  to  live  together  and 
think  alike.  On  the  contrary,  each  man  who  entered  the 
new  society  was  a  focus  of  centrifugal  energies.  The  Greek, 
acute,  speculative,  fastidious,  metaphysical,  had  endeavoured 
to  think  of  God  either  as  He  was  in  philosophy,  as  an  ab- 
stract substance  or  a  law  of  reason  ;  or,  as  the  plastic  arts 
had  represented  Him,  as  an  idealized  man,  godlike  because 
beautiful ;  or,  as  the  imaginative  mythology  conceived  Him, 
as  protean  and  stupendous  in  shape,  but  mixed  in  character 
and  achievement.  The  Roman,  civil  in  temper,  political  in 
genius,  military  in  ambition  and  by  habit,  had  conceived  the 
Deity  through  the  imperial  idea,  as  typified  in  the  Emperor 
and  as  defined  and  sanctioned  by  the  State.  The  Persian 
or  the  Phrygian,  touched  with  the  oriental  mysticism 
which  construed  existence  as  a  kingdom  under  the  rival 
forces  of  light  and  darkness,  spirit  and  matter,  good  and  evil, 
had  been  wont  to  divide  the  functions  of  God  between  a 
Creator  who  formed,  but  did  not  love  man,  and  a  Father  who 
redeemed  him  and  was  not  always  able  to  save.  The  bar- 
barian, who  confounded  ecstasy  with  inspiration  and  religion 
with  exhilaration,  could  best  appreciate  a  God  who  liked  the 
oblation  and  the  exuberant  fertility  of  man.  The  Jew,  who 
knew  himself  to  be  a  son  of  Abraham,  wished,  even  after  his 
conversion,  to  believe  in  the  God  who  had  established  the  law 
and  spoken  through  Moses  and  the  prophets,  who  loved  the 
circumcised,  hated  idols  and  condemned  the  ways  and 
thoughts  of  the  heathen.  The  men  who  constituted  the 

o 

people  of  the  religion  were  thus  varied  in  type  and  without 
any  of  the  unities  of  thought  and  mind  which  come  from 
centuries  of  organized  co-existence  and  the  cumulative  effects 
of  a  long  and  jealously  guarded  inheritance.  Hence  came 
the  problem  :  How  out  of  the  mixed  families  of  man,  the 


IN    MAN    WITH    A    UNIVERSAL    RELIGION  523 

multitude  of  tongues  he  speaks,  the  strongly  marked  societies 
and  castes,  the  opposed  States  and  kingdoms,  the  rival 
religions  and  civilizations  which  at  once  make  up  the  human 
race  and  isolate  its  parts  from  each  other,  could  a  people  be 
evolved  and  organized  into  the  social  unity  or  the  homo- 
geneous society  needed  for  the  expression  and  realization  of 
a  universal  religion  ? 

§   II.      The  Social  Ideal  of  Jesus 

I.  We  have  said  that  this  was  a  new  and  peculiar  problem, 
and  we  may  add  that  it  was  one  which  no  statesmanship 
could  have  solved.  The  solution,  if  it  was  to  come  at  all, 
could  only  be  effected  by  the  energy  of  some  constitutive 
idea  acting  in  the  mind.  The  inseparability  of  the  religions 
and  civil  provinces  and  customs  was,  indeed,  an  ultimate 
axiom  of  thought  to  the  societies  and  States  of  antiquity. 
Philosophical  sects  were  common,  and  so  were  private  and 
family  cults,  but  these  were  conceived  not  as  supersessive  or 
prohibitive,  but  as  supplementary  of  the  public  and  legal 
worship.  Indeed,  the  notion  of  a  religion  which  appealed  to 
man  as  man,  and  had  no  regard  to  racial,  social,  or  class  dis- 
tinctions, was  quite  alien  to  ancient  thought.  Rome,  in  ex- 
tending her  empire,  had  spread  her  law  but  not  her  religion  ; 
she  was,  indeed,  here  more  inclined  to  imitate  older  States  than 
to  require  of  them  acceptance  of  her  deities  and  observance 
of  her  rites.  The  ideal  city  of  the  Greek  thinkers  was  a 
Greek  State,  incapable  of  realization  by  any  other  than  Greek 
men.  And  so  the  last  thing  Greece  and  Rome  could  have 
imagined  was  the  possibility  of  realizing  a  religion  without 
some  State,  with  its  national  customs  and  sanctions,  as  its 
basis.  But  the  ideal  of  Jesus  was  altogether  unlike  these.  lie 
had  lived  so  modestly  within  His  own  little  world.  Me  and  it 
so  corresponded,  it  so  occupied  Ilis  activities,  and  lie  found 
it  so  sufficient  as  an  arena  for  His  career,  that  we  can  hanliv 


524     THE    IDEAL   AND    METHOD   OF   JESUS 

think  of  Him  as  nursing  vaster  ambitions  than  had  ever 
dawned  on  the  imagination  of  any  statesman  or  warrior  of 
antiquity.  And  we  do  not  so  think  of  Him,  for  ambition  is 
not  a  word  that  can  with  any  propriety  be  used  to  charac- 
terize anything  He  designed  or  conceived.  But  the  more  we 
study  the  more  we  admire  what  He  proposed  to  do,  and  the 
way  in  which  He  proceeded  to  do  it.  For  Jesus  had  both  a 
social  ideal  and  a  social  method  ;  the  ideal  was  expressed  in 
His  notion  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and  His  method  was  the 
way  He  took  to  realize  it.  The  ideal  may  be  defined  as 
perfect  obedience  towards  God,  embodied  in  perfect  duty 
towards  man.  Obedience  signified  that  man  knew  God  as 
Jesus  knew  Him  and  had  made  Him  known,  loved  Him  as 
Jesus  loved,  and  therefore  obeyed  as  He  obeyed.  Apart  from 
this  attitude — i.e.  unless  God  was  pleased  with  man,  and  man 
was  reconciled  to  God, — obedience  was  not  possible  ;  and  the 
relation  to  God  determined  the  duty  towards  Man,  for  God 
could  not  be  loved  and  the  creature  He  loved  be  hated.  Thus 
love  to  one's  neighbour  was  but  active  and  applied  love  of 
God  ;  and  this  love  was  the  law  of  the  Kingdom.  It  was  a 
universal  law,  knew  no  distinction  of  caste  or  country,  Jew  or 
Samaritan.  It  was  a  law  possessed  of  inexhaustible  energies  ; 
it  could  never  live  as  if  it  had  said  the  last  good  word  and 
performed  its  final  good  act,  but  must  ever  impel  man  for- 
ward. It  was  an  imperious  law,  for  it  could  never  allow  a  man 
to  suffer  or  to  perish  which  the  soul  by  dying  might  save. 
And  it  \vas  necessary,  for  without  it  no  help  could  be  effec- 
tive nor  could  any  effort  be  restorative.  This  germinal  and 
governing  principle  developed  into  a  multitude  of  special 
laws,  as  (i.)  the  law  of  beneficence  :  men  were  to  return  not 
evil  for  evil,  or  even  good  for  good,  but  good  for  evil  ;  no  one 
was  to  have  the  awful  right  of  sitting  in  the  judgment  seat  of 
God,  or  the  devilish  power  of  compelling  us  to  harm  him  by 
being  harmful  to  us.  (ii.)  The  law  of  reciprocity  :  we  were  to 
do  unto  others  as  we  would  have  others  do  unto  us  :  our  soul 


HIS    STATE:    ITS    LAWS    AND   ORGANISM     525 

was  to  stand  in  their  soul's  place,  and  we  were  to  act  as  if 
they  were  we  and  we  were  they.  (iii.)  The  law  of  charity  : 
we  were  not  to  judge  lest  we  should  be  judged.  Judgement 
was  the  function  of  God  ;  the  Pharisee  over  against  the  Pub- 
lican showed  how  pitiable  man  became  when  he  tried  to 
appraise  himself  and  his  neighbour,  (iv.)  The  law  of  forgive- 
ness :  man  was  to  forgive  his  brother,  not  once  or  twice,  but 
as  often  as  he  needed  to  be  forgiven,  certain  that  where  all 
offended  no  one  could  be  blameless,  (v.)  The  law  of  ends  or 
motives  :  the  real  sin  is  not  the  outer  act,  but  the  mind  that 
wills  the  act,  and  the  end  that  moves  the  will.  Adultery  is 
not  a  deed,  but  the  lust  to  do  it.  (vi.)  The  law  of  self- 
denial  :  man  is  to  surrender  himself  and  all  he  thinks  he 
rightfully  possesses,  that  he  may  have  nothing  of  his  own,  but 
may  hold  all  of  Christ,  and  hold  it  for  Him  and  for  the  service 
of  man.  (vii.)  The  law  of  redemption  :  man  is  not  to  live 
as  one  who  is  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  as  one  who  is  the 
servant  of  all,  bound  to  save  even  by  the  sacrifice  of  himself. 
These  are  but  a  few  of  the  laws  of  the  Kingdom,  which  is  a 
society  of  mortal  men  living  as  sons  of  the  eternal  God, 
with  all  their  relations  realized  in  time,  yet  all  conceived  as 
eternal.  Men  are  neighbours  to  each  other,  but  God  is  the 
one  and  absolute  Sovereign  ;  and  all  that  they  do  to  each 
other  they  do  unto  God. 

2.  No\v  this  ideal  may  seem  ethical  rather  than  religious, 
more  concerned  with  duty  to  man  than  with  the  worship  of 
God.  And  without  question  it  has  some  omissions  that  appear 
the  more  extraordinary  that  we  cannot  think  them  to  have 
been  undesigned.  Jesus  seems  to  conceive  the  cultus  as  the 
least  part  of  religion,  most  abused  when  taken  for  the  whole  or 
for  the  most  essential  part.  He  teaches  man  to  prav,  but  for 
Himself  He  prays  apart.  He  visits  the  Synagogue,  reads  the 
Scriptures,  and  speaks  to  the  people  ;  but  He  prefers  to  teach 
on  the  mountain,  or  in  the  fields,  bv  the  wayside  or  at  the  sea- 
shore, lie  speaks  of  the  altar  not  as  if  it  consecrated  the 


526       THE    RELIGIOUS    IDEAL    IS    SOCIAL 

gift,  but  as  if  the  consecration  depended  on  the  spirit  of  the 
giver.1  He  makes  prayer  avail  not  because  of  the  place 
where  it  is  offered  or  the  person  who  offers  it,  but  because  of 
the  offerer's  own  heart.2  For  the  priest  as  priest,  the  temple 
as  temple,  the  ritual  as  ritual,  He  had  no  respect ;  but  only 
for  the  mercy  that  was  greater  than  sacrifice,  the  piety  that 
was  better  than  ceremonies.  What  His  people  came  to  re- 
gard as  their  supreme  religious  act  was  a  social  observance,  a 
supper  which  recalled  an  event  in  the  life  of  Israel  in  which 
the  priesthood,  as  such,  and  the  temple  as  temple,  played  no 
part,  but  where  the  worship  was  domestic  and  the  father  was 
the  priest.  Yet  it  would  be  to  misconceive  His  whole  spirit 
and  purpose  to  say,  "  The  ideal  of  Jesus  is  not  so  much  re- 
ligious as  ethical  "  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  so  intensely  ethical 
because  so  essentially  religious.  What  concerns  Him  is  that 
man  should  think  rightly  of  God  and  do  justly  to  man.  If 
they  so  think  and  do,  they  will  worship  as  they  ought  ;  if  they 
refuse  so  to  do  and  think,  no  worship  they  can  offer  will  be 
agreeable  to  Him,  and  no  regulations  of  it  will  be  good  and 
efficacious.  There  is  nothing  so  certain  as  that  the  good  man 
will  worship  ;  for  him  the  most  expressive  form  is  the  one 
most  congenial  to  his  spirit  ;  and  there  is  nothing  more  cer- 
tain than  that  a  bad  man  may  scrupulously  observe  every 
ritual  prescription  without  being  any  the  better  for  all  his 
observances.  Jesus,  in  harmony  with  His  own  mind  and 
practice,  laid  emphasis  on  the  Spirit,  what  the  man  is  to 
God  and  does  to  man,  certain  that  where  there  is  concern 
for  the  weightier  matters  of  the  law,  the  lighter  will  not  be 
neglected. 

1  Matt.  v.  22-24.  The  argument  in  xxiii.  19 — cf.  whole  context  13-24 
— is  ad  hominem,  and  has  no  force  if  the  Pharisaic  thesis  and  attitude  be 
taken  away. 

*  Luke  xviii.   10-14. 


THE    METHOD    WAS    AS    WAS    THE    IDEAL  527 

§   III.    The  .Social  Method  of  Jesus  and  its  Impersonation 

I.  The  social  method  corresponded  to  the  social  ideal  ; 
Jesus  created  a  people  for  His  religion  by  teaching  men 
to  become  like  Himself.  He  called  them  into  His  society, 
made  them  His  disciples,  which  simply  means  men  who  could 
learn  of  Him;  He  lived  with  them,  threw  over  them  the  spell 
of  His  character  and  influence,  opened  their  eyes  by  His 
words  and  example,  woke  them  to  admiration,  roused  them  to 
love.  Discipleship  olid  not  mean  attainment,  but  the  capacity 
to  attain,  the  fidelity  that  could  follow,  the  sympathy  that 
could  appreciate,  the  susceptibility  that  could  imitate.  But 
this  method  depended  on  His  personal  being  and  presence  : 
without  Him  it  could  have  no  existence,  with  Him  it  was  of 
necessity.  Now  the  fact  we  have  to  deal  with  is  this  : — the 
method  continued  in  operation  after  the  Crucifixion,  and  men 
became  Christians  by  becoming  disciples  of  Jesus.  He  called, 
and  their  response  was  termed  conversion.  And  so  His 
society  did  not  die  when  He  died,  and  what  kept  it  living  was 
the  belief  in  His  continued  and  active  existence.  This  is  the 
fact  that  stands  out  clearly  amid  the  confusions  of  the  first 
days.  Peter  preached  that  Jesus  had  not  seen  "  corruption," 
but  was  exalted  to  the  right  hand  of  God  as  "a  Prince  and  a 
Saviour."  !  The  resurrection  was  not  a  mere  physical  miracle 
but  a  spiritual  experience ;  it  meant  that  Jesus  lived  and 
reigned  as  "  both  Lord  and  Christ."  The  belief  emboldened 
Peter  and  John  to  refuse,  on  the  ground  that  they  must  obey 
God  rather  than  men,  to  be  silenced  by  the  priests  and  rulers  ;- 
and  in  its  strength  the  Church  stood  the  test  suggested  by  the 
prudent  diplomacy  of  Gamaliel/1  The  men  who  saw  "  the 
Son  of  Man  standing  at  the  right  hand  of  God"  believed  that, 
since  His  presence  had  ceased  to  be  local  and  visible,  it  had 
become  universal  and  spiritual  ;  and  so  they  awoke  to  the 
duty  of  commanding  in  His  name  all  men  to  repent,  of  calling 
1  Acts  ii.  31-36  ;  v.  31.  *  v  29.  3  v.  38-39 


528  APOSTLES    FOLLOW    CHRIST'S    METHOD 

all  into  His  discipleship.  In  the  belief  that  He  still  lived 
Stephen  died  ;  it  was  a  vision  in  which  he  saw  the  Lord  that 
converted  Paul.  When  persecution  came  and  compelled  the 
disciples  to  choose  between  Jerusalem  and  Christ,  they  chose 
as  men  who  saw  the  invisible.  The  choice  drove  them  out  of 
Judea,  and  forced  them  either  to  be  dumb  or  to  preach  His 
name  to  the  Gentiles.  They  believed  and  therefore  preached  ; 
and  this  raised  questions  as  to  His  authority  which  they 
answered  by  placing  Him  high  above  Moses,  and  by  so  modify- 
ing, in  spite  of  themselves,  Jewish  customs  as  to  suit  non- 
Jewish  men.  Soon  the  sole  note  of  their  society  came  to  be 
faith  in  His  Name  ;  yet  they  did  not  by  escaping  from  Judea 
escape  from  persecution.  The  rabble  in  the  Greek  cities 
proved  even  more  intolerant  than  the  Jewish  priesthood  ;  but 
the  preachers  only  the  more  openly  "  placarded  "  Jesus  Christ 
crucified  before  their  eyes.1  Municipalities,  anxious  to  keep 
the  peace,  threw  them  into  prison  without  trial ;  "  lewd  fellows 
of  the  baser  sort"  gathered  together  against  them  and  set 
cities  in  an  uproar 2  ;  philosophers  argued  as  if  they  were 
ignorant  men  and  dabblers  in  matters  too  high  for  them  ; 
tradesmen  whose  crafts  were  in  danger  became  enthusiasts 
for  the  goddess  whose  shrines  they  made  and  sold  ;  but  love 
of  the  invisible  Sovereign  proved  mightier  than  fear  of  all 
visible  powers.  In  short,  the  idea  organized  a  people  for  the 
religion  in  the  face  of  difficulties  both  inner  and  outer,  those 
within  being  even  more  insurmountable  than  those  without. 
Racial  temper,  for  example,  is  one  of  the  most  obdurate  and 
invincible  things  in  man,  and  in  no  man  more  than  the  Jew  ; 
but  this  idea  so  changed  and  humanized  the  strongest  son  of 
that  strong  race,  that  he  declared  there  were  in  Christ  neither 
Jc\v  nor  Greek,  neither  barbarian,  Scythian,  bond  nor  free,  but 
only  the  family  of  saints,  the  household  of  God.  It  so  over- 
came the  antipathies  of  blood  and  culture  and  speech  that 
Greeks  and  Jews  became  kinsmen,  and  the  richer  sent  to  the 

1    Gal.  iii.   I.     ols  K«T'  o<f)0a\fiovs  ''Irjcrous  Xpicrrbs  7rpocypd<pr)  f(TTavpu>/J.(Vos. 

*  Acts  xvii.  5. 


BUDDHA'S    SOCIETY   AND   CHRIST'S       529 

poorer  saints  the  help  they  needed.  Newer  ideals  never  work 
without  friction,  and  wherever  an  old  order  is  dissolved  con- 
fusion reigns  before  a  new  one  can  be  built  up.  We  see  in 
churches  like  Corinth  how  this  happened  ;  but  we  also  see 
how  the  spirit  of  potent  love  worked  like  a  healing  grace, 
begot  ethical  ideals  that  rebuked  ethnical  customs,  and 
was  silently  making  a  society  that  had  been  indifferent  to 
good,  careful  of  virtue.  The  people  who  accomplished 
these  things  had  no  arms  in  their  hands,  yet  they  faced  with- 
out dismay  the  mightiest  of  all  armed  powers,  and  when  it 
proudly  commanded  them  to  worship  its  gods  as  well  as  their 
own,  they  said  :  "  Command  us  as  a  civil  sovereign  in  civil 
things  and  we  will  dutifully  obey,  but  speak  to  us  as  a 
religious  authority  and  we  will  not  listen  to  you.  You  may 
kill,  for  you  have  the  power  of  life  and  death,  but  here  you 
cannot  command  and  shall  not  control.  To  our  own  Master 
we  stand  or  fall,  but  that  Master  is  neither  the  Emperor 
nor  the  Senate  of  Rome,  He  is  Jesus  Christ." 

2.  But  before  we  can  fully  appreciate  this  ideal  and  method 
we  must  compare  them  with  what  may  be  conceived  as  actual 
or  possible  alternatives.  Buddha  had  founded  a  church  as 
well  as  a  religion  ;  indeed,  in  his  case  these  may  be  termed 
one  and  the  same.  His  ideal  was  an  ascetic  and  celibate 
community  :  monks  who,  as  weary  of  the  world,  took  refuge 
with  the  Buddha  and  his  order ;  and  nuns  who,  though  as 
women  disliked  and  distrusted,  had  still  as  human  beings 
established  their  right  to  consideration  at  his  hands.  In  no 
point  is  his  want  of  originality  so  apparent  as  here  ;  he  simply 
borrowed  the  idea  of  discipleship  from  the  Brahmanical 
schools,  made  it  express  the  ideal  state,  and  framed  the 
regulations  which  their  and  his  experience  had  proved  to  be 
necessary.  His  community  was  to  be  vowed  to  poverty;  his 
saint  was  to  be  a  mendicant  without  worldlv  goods  or  am- 
bitions, industrial  energies  or  occupation.  He  was  to  cease 
to  be  a  father  or  brother  a  husband  or  son  a  citizen  or  neigh- 

r.c.R.  34 


530  MOST    ORIGINAL   OF    FOUNDERS 

hour ;  he  was  to  wear  a  special  dress,  to  abstain  from  many 
vices,  but  also  from  many  duties  ;  to  live  the  profitless  life  of 
one  whose  sole  end  was  to  seek  beatitude,  and  whose  function 
was  to  show  how  it  could  be  attained.  What  we  should  call  the 
lay  world  was  held  to  be  only  nominally  and  potentially  of 
the  religion,  being  needful  to  the  maintenance  of  the  mendi- 
cant community  and  the  source  whence  it  could  be  supplied 
with  celibate  members.  But  essentially,  the  man  who  had 
not  made  the  great  renunciation  stood  only  in  the  outer  court, 
where  he  waited  the  illumination  that  was  to  lead  him  within 
If  he  was  reverent,  he  was  judged  worthy  to  have  the  bowl 
passed  to  him  ;  if  impious  the  bowl  must  be  withheld,  i.e.  he 
was  not  fit  to  contribute  to  the  support  of  the  monks  who 
preached  to  him  concerning  the  vanity  of  all  human  things 
Now  if  Jesus  had  been  no  more  original  than  Buddha,  there 
were  sects  or  schools  enough  for  Him  to  imitate.  There 
were  the  Essenes,  pious  men,  ascetics,  cultivating  purity  and 
poverty,  "  honouring  God  most  of  all,"  and  after  Him  Moses, 
whom  no  man  must  be  allowed  to  blaspheme.  They  believed 
in  the  rigorous  regulation  of  life  ;  in  avoiding  the  touch  of  the 
uncircumcised  ;  in  bodily  washings  ;  in  the  scrupulous  observ- 
ance of  the  Sabbath  ;  in  abstaining  from  certain  kinds  of 
food  ;  in  eating  only  what  clean  hands  had  cooked  ;  in  being 
their  own  priests  and  offering  their  own  sacrifices.  If  He  had 
avoided  the  Essenes,  He  could  have  found  many  types  of  the 
theocratic  ideal,  Maccabaean,  Apocalyptic,  Pharisaic,  popular 
and  Messianic.  Such  an  ideal  had  crossed  His  mind  in  the 
vision  which  showed  Him  "  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world." 
Later  it  was  to  become  the  ideal  of  Mohammed  ;  and  he  was 
so  to  organize  his  Church  that  while  it  was  built  on  the  Word 
it  yet  should  like  a  State  wield  the  sword  ;  and  by  the  use 
of  these  two  it  converted  Arabia,  subdued  kingdoms,  and 
founded  Empires.  But  Jesus,  more  original  and  daring  than 
either  of  these,  conscious  of  a  function  for  man  which  re- 
sembles nothing  so  much  as  the  function  of  God  in  creation. 


HIS    SOCIETY    ARTICULATES    HIS    PERSON  531 

disdained  all  positive  laws,  whether  regulative,  ceremonial, 
administrative  or  coercive,  and  founded  His  society  simply 
by  discipleship. 

3.  But  the  significance  of  His  social  ideal  and  method  be- 
comes apparent  only  when  they  and  the  idea  of  His  person 
are  looked  at  together.  The  person  may  be  described  as  His 
social  ideal  embodied  and  organized  for  the  creation  of  His 
society.  The  ideas  He  impersonates  become  the  ideals  it 
articulates  ;  in  other  words,  He  is  the  Symbol  of  all  it  ought 
to  be.  His  people  were  to  be  like  Him,  sons  of  God  ;  and  as 
He  was  "  Son  of  Man  "  His  society  was  to  know  no  distinc- 
tion of  blood  or  birth  or  estate,  but  to  be  the  home  where  men 
were  to  be  born  and  nursed  as  children  of  humanity.  As  He 
impersonated  the  race  before  God,  He  also  so  personalized  man 
to  His  Church  that  to  live  unto  Him  was  to  live  for  all  man- 
kind. As  He  saves  by  bearing  the  sin  which  was  not  His 
own,  so  His  people  must  sorrow  and  suffer  and  die  if  they 
would  save  men.  The  apostle  who  conceives  Christ  as  the 
Second  Adam,  the  Head  of  the  New  Mankind,  conceives  the 
Church  as  His  body,  all  its  members  being  related  to  each 
other  as  well  as  to  Him.  Their  life  is  His,  their  actions  are 
inspired  by  Him,  and  it  is  only  through  their  relation  to  Him 
that  they  can  perfectly  realize  all  other  relations  and  faith- 
full}-  fulfil  all  duties.  In  other  words,  His  society  was  meant 
as  His  articulated  person  to  be  as  ethical  as  Himself.  In 
Hebrews  His  people  are  the  people  of  the  New  Covenant, 
with  the  law  of  God  written  in  their  hearts,  made  by  their 
faith  independent  of  time,  and  lifted  into  fellowship  with  the 
Church  of  the  firstborn  whose  names  are  written  in  heaven. 
In  the  Apocalypse  His  society  appears  under  a  most  winsome 
figure  :  it  is  "  the  bride  of  the  Lamb,"  arraved  in  bridal  gar- 
ments ;  or,  yet  again,  it  appears  as  a  multitude  of  saints 
redeemed  "  out  of  every  tribe  and  people,  nation  and  tongue." 
Possibly  the  last  thing  John  and  Paul  thought  of  as  they 
laboured  to  interpret  the  person,  was  that  they  were  creating 


532  WHAT    IS    A   POSITIVE    RELIGION:    THE 

an  ethical  ideal  for  a  universal  society  ;  but  it  is  not  the  self- 
conscious  workman  that  accomplishes  the  grandest  work. 
And  no  man  ever  did  greater  things  for  humanity  than  those 
who  interpreted  Christ  into  its  ideal,  personal  and  social. 

§   IV.   The  Christian  not  a  Positive  Religion 

I.  The  argument  here  touches  one  of  the  supreme  and 
differentiating  distinctions  of  Christianity  :  it  is  a  personal 
but  not  a  positive  religion.  The  term  "  positive  "  is  juristic 
rather  than  theological,  and  was  introduced  into  theology 
by  a  distinguished  lawyer  who  desired  to  construe  the 
relations  of  God  and  man  in  the  categories  of  his  own 
science.  It  denotes  an  enacted,  as  distinct  from  a  natural, 
law;  the  legislation  which  an  established  authority,  whether 
personal  like  king  or  emperor,  or  representative  like  a  Senate 
or  Parliament,  has  promulgated  and  enforced,  in  distinction 
from  the  order,  which  nature  is  supposed  to  have  constituted, 
the  equity  which  issues  from  conscience  and  speaks  in  its 
name.  Positive  is  public  law,  proclaimed  and  upheld  by 
some  public  authority.  Now  founded  religions  are  by  the 
very  necessities  of  their  origin,  positive,  i.e.  they  express 
some  will  ;  their  beliefs  are,  as  it  were,  public  laws  ;  their 
whole  order  is  a  legislation  authoritatively  enacted.  Hence 
the  religion  of  Israel,  conceived  as  the  creation  of  a  lawgiver, 
is  positive  ;  but  the  older  Semitic  cults,  which  no  statesman 
instituted  or  reformed,  are  natural.  Buddha,  in  forming  his 
Sanglia  or  Church,  and  framing  the  laws  as  to  dress,  diet 
and  social  relations  according  to  which  his  people  were  to 
live,  founded  a  positive  religion.  So  did  Mohammed  when 
he  made  the  Koran  the  law  for  Islam  ;  for  his  authority  is 
ultimate,  his  words  express  God's  will,  and  all  we  can  know 
of  God  is  what  he  has  made  known.  But  Christ  is  not 
related  to  Christianity  as  are  these  creators  to  the  religions 
that  bear  their  names.  The  pre-eminence  belongs  to  His 


SPECULATIVE    IDEA    AN    ETHICAL    IDEAL  533 

person,  not  to  His  words  ;  His  people  live  by  faith,  not  in 
what  He  said,  but  in  what  He  is  ;  they  are  governed  not  by 
statutes  He  framed,  but  by  the  ideal  He  embodied.  In  other 
words,  His  religion  is  an  evolution  of  belief,  not  a  product 
of  authoritative  legislation.  Hence  the  extraordinary  sig- 
nificance of  His  person,  which,  till  it  was  interpreted,  was 
but  the  immanent  possibility  of  a  religion.  Hence,  too,  the 
value  of  the  speculative  idea  to  the  ethical  ideal  ;  it  was  the 
universal  Man  of  the  one  that  created  the  potent  humanity 
of  the  other.  And  so  while  positive  legislation,  like  Buddha's 
or  Mohammed's,  emphasized  the  differences  between  those 
within  and  those  without  their  societies,  the  Christian  idea 
emphasized  their  common  humanity.  Through  the  Man 
who  was  all  mankind,  all  men  became  kin.  The  idea  that 
He  who  saves  is  not  so  much  an  individual  as  the  collective 
race,  compels  His  people  to  feel  that  in  His  presence  all 
differences  of  blood  and  colour  and  caste  vanish  ;  that  to  be 
a  man  is  to  be  His,  redeemed  by  His  death  and  passion  ; 
and  that  where  He  has  loved  we  dare  not  cast  out  or  despise. 
The  people  were  not  constituted  like  a  state  by  positive 
law,  but  by  those  affinities  of  the  Spirit  which  faith  begot 
and  developed. 

2.  But  this  method  of  constituting  the  people  involved  a 
correlative  method  of  government.  The  ultimate  sanction 
of  positive  law  is  the  physical  penalty.  The  magistrate  is 
able  to  enforce  obedience  because  he  bears  the  sword.  The 
idea  of  a  free  State  is  freedom  to  make  its  own  laws,  but 
not  that  its  citizens  are  free  to  break  the  laws  which  have 
been  made.  Once  the  collective  will  has  legislated,  all 
single  wills  must  obey  ;  and  if  any  one  refuses  obedience 
he  will  soon  find  the  legislative  become  not  a  friendly  and 
protective,  but  a  hostile  and  retributive  power.  Though 
the  bases  of  authority  may  be  moral,  yet  the  sanctions  or 
penalties  it  uses  to  enforce  its  authority  must  be  physical. 
The  sovereignty  of  Christ,  on  the  other  hand,  is  in  basis 


534    CHRIST    IS    LORD    OF   THE    CONSCIENCE 

and  form,  in  precept  and  sanction,  rational  and  moral.  He 
governs  man  as  an  idea  and  an  ideal,  i.e.  through  his 
reason  and  by  his  conscience.  Hence  belief  is  a  material, 
but  polity  is  a  formal  question  ;  imitation  of  Christ  is 
essential,  but  church  is  more  or  less  an  accident  of  time 
and  place.  A  man  need  not  be  either  a  monk  or  a 
Churchman  to  be  a  Christian  ;  but  if  he  be  a  Christian 
he  may  be  both,  or  either,  or  neither.  He  may  be  a 
master  or  servant,  a  soldier  or  statesman,  a  merchant  or 
mechanic ;  but  he  must  be  a  man  who  obeys  the  Sovereign 
of  his  soul.  The  society  that  is  not  free  to  form  its  own 
polity  lives  in  bondage  to  tradition  and  custom  ;  but  the 
rule  of  God  is  made  possible  only  by  the  exercised  and  dis- 
ciplined freedom  of  man.  And  so  the  immediate  result  of  the 
spiritual  sovereignty  was  the  creation  of  conscience  in  re- 
ligion, and  with  it  the  rise  of  a  higher  social  and  civil  order. 
For  the  ancient  mind  so  identified  religion  and  State  that  no 
citizen  was  conceived  to  be  at  liberty  to  refuse  to  do  honour 
to  his  country's  gods  ;  it  was  a  grave  act  of  treason  not  to 
worship  the  image  or  the  symbol  the  emperor  set  up.  Where 
this  notion  prevailed  no  change  in  religion  was  possible,  save 
by  means  of  a  civil  revolution  ;  and  out  of  it  came  tyran- 
nies, hypocrisies  and  vices  too  many  to  enumerate.  Christ's 
method  left  the  man  in  his  old  world,  but  changed  the  man  ; 
and  the  man  He  changed  He  made  so  loyal  in  all  civil 
duties,  while  so  hostile  to  civil  control  over  his  conscience, 
that  the  State,  to  maintain  itself,  was  forced  so  to  change 
its  functions  and  readjust  its  claims  as  to  be  able  to  in- 
clude the  man.  These  things  are  a  parable,  but  they  illustrate 
the  wisdom  of  the  action  which,  instead  of  constituting  a 
people  by  positive,  separative  regulations,  created  one  by  the 
method  of  discipleship  and  faith  in  a  transcendental  idea. 

3.  The  social  ideal  thus  created  and  realized  by  the  idea  of 
Christ's  person  had  four  characteristics  :  (i.)  His  people  were 
gathered  out  of  all  nations  without  any  respect  to  blood  or 


AND    THROUGH    IT    HE   GOVERNS    MAN     535 

rank  or  caste  ;  they  were  called  simply  as  men,  and  con- 
stituted into  a  new  mankind,  (ii.)  They  were  so  organized 
according  to  the  idea  of  His  person,  that  they  ma}-  be  de- 
scribed as,  symbolically,  its  articulation,  (iii.)  As  such  they 
represented  Him  and  continued  His  work.  What  this  work 
is  ought  to  be  construed,  not  through  the  offices  of  organized 
religion,  but  through  the  character,  the  words  and  the 
history  of  Jesus  Himself,  (iv.)  The  most  distinctive  qualities 
of  this  society,  its  attributes  and  activities,  were,  like  Christ's 
own,  ethical,  and  consisted  in  a  worship  and  service  of  God 
which  ameliorated  the  state  of  man.  Where  the  civil  and 
military  ambitions,  the  ceremonial  and  sacerdotal  functions 
of  the  old  States  stood,  the  humane  beneficences  of  the  new 
people  were  now  to  stand.  If  His  Church  had  conformed 
to  His  ideal,  had  followed  His  method  in  His  Spirit,  who 
can  tell  what  man  would  have  been  to-day?  All  we  can 
say  is,  the  vision  of  the  seer  of  Patmos,1  who  saw  the  king- 
dom of  the  world  become  the  kingdom  of  our  God  and  of 
His  Christ,  would  have  been  infinitely  nearer  fulfilment  than 
it  is. 

1  Rev.  xi.  15. 


CHAPTER  II 

IDEAL   RELIGION   AND   THE    IDEA   OF   GOD 
§     I.      The  Idea  of  God  in  Religion 

I.  T  TOW  or  under  what  conditions  may  the  belief  in  one 
J-  J-  God  be  incorporated  in  a  universal  religion  ?  To 
discuss  this  question  we  must  resume  certain  positions  already 
argued  :  (a)  that  a  single  universal  religion  is  possible,  but 
only  through  the  belief  in  one  God  ;  (/3)  that  the  belief  may 
exist  without  the  religion,  though  not  the  religion  without  the 
belief;  and  (7)  that  the  incorporation  can  happen  only 
under  certain  terms  or  conditions,  such  as  (i)  that  God  is  held 
to  be  equally  accessible  in  all  places,  to  all  peoples  and  per- 
sons ;  (2)  that  the  terms  on  which  access  is  granted  are  cap- 
able of  fulfilment  by  all  men  ;  and  (3)  that  He  has  a  character  all 
can  trust  and  qualities  all  can  reverence.  These  principles 
imply  others  still  more  fundamental,  such  as  (a)  the  correlativity 
of  our  knowledge  of  God,  of  nature,  and  of  ourselves;  (/3)  the  in- 
dissoluble connexion  between  the  conception  of  God  as  a  moral 
Being  and  the  facts  of  our  moral  nature  ;  (7)  the  co-ordination 
of  His  responsibility  for  us  with  our  responsibility  to  Him,  His 
responsibility  being  increased  rather  than  lessened  by  the 
existence  of  evil  ;  and  (S)  the  witness  borne  (i)  by  man's 
universal  search  for  God  to  His  search  for  universal  man; 
(2)  by  the  universality  of  the  religions  to  the  possibility  of 
a  universal  religion  ;  and  (3)  by  the  action  of  the  higher  reli- 
gious ideas  on  man  to  his  need  of  the  highest  of  all  ideas  in  its 
highest  form  in  order  that  he  may  attain  his  most  perfect  state. 


HOW    MAY    IDEA   OF   GOD    BE    REALIZED    537 

2.  How,  then,  is  this  highest  of  all  ideas  to  be  worthily  realized, 
i.e.  incorporated  in  a  religion  which  does  justice  to  its  intrinsic 
qualities  and  capabilities  ?  There  is  nothing  so  easy  as  to 
change  an  idea  in  philosophy,  nothing  so  near  to  the  impossible 
as  to  change  an  idea  in  religion.  What  reason  created  reason 
can  uncreate  ;  what  human  nature  has  made  can  be  unmade 
only  by  the  dissolution  or  reconstruction  of  the  nature.  And 
religious  beliefs  have  not  only  a  more  indestructible  life,  but 
a  vaster  potency  than  philosophical  ideas.  They  have  lived 
longer  and  gathered  strength  from  their  years  ;  they  speak  to 
man  and  to  more  of  him,  with  a  more  audible  and  more 
familiar  and  intelligible  voice.  If  we  try  to  represent  a  deity 
as  he  appears  to  those  who  worship  him,  how  innumerable 
are  the  figures  of  speech  we  must  employ  !  He  is  the  highest 
known  power,  yet  he  is  in  the  hands  of  those  who  address 
him.  His  interests  are  so  theirs  and  his  inclination  such  that 
if  they  but  do  the  thing  he  approves,  he  will  do  what  they 
desire.  What  he  is  to  them  he  has  been  to  their  fathers  ; 
their  history  is  the  story  of  his  action  ;  their  good  fortune  tells 
of  his  favour,  their  calamities  tell  of  his  displeasure.  The 
events  which  sum  up  the  meaning  of  life  are  associated  with 
his  name  ;  the  birth  which  promises  continuance  to  the 
family,  the  marriage  which  brings  it  enlargement,  the  death 
which  makes  the  living  desolate,  yet  gives  them  dignity  by 
binding  their  moment  of  being  to  the  eternal.  If  they  con- 
tend in  battle,  they  ask  him  for  victory  ;  if  they  are  confronted 
by  famine,  they  beseech  him  for  food  ;  if  their  enemies  perish, 
they  sing  his  praises  ;  if  pestilence  and  death  walk  abroad, 
they  appease  his  wrath.  If  they  have  imagination,  their 
delight  is  the  poetry  that  exalts  his  majesty  and  his  power  ; 
if  the\'  are  emotional,  they  either  cultivate  the  mysticism  that 
seeks  absorption  in  him,  or  they  offer  the  gifts  that  administer 
comfort  by  assuaging  fear  ;  if  they  are  moral  they  put  themselves 
under  discipline  and  train  themselves  into  asceticism  and  self- 
denial.  There  is  no  mood  that  the  god  who  lives  in  the  rcli- 


538     THE    UNITY   AND    MORALITY    OF   GOD 

gion  does  not  speak  to,  no  conviction  or  affection,  no  passion  or 
prejudice  to  which  he  does  not  appeal.  It  is  no  wonder,  then, 
that  the  change  of  an  ancestral  and  national  deity  is  one  of  the 
rarest  things  in  history  ;  and  it  is  the  rarer  because  in  this 
region,  where  the  ideas  are  all  ideas  of  the  reason,  reason  so 
seldom  reigns,  or  reigns  with  shut  or  blinded  or  veiled  eyes. 
Hence  what  may  be  to  the  thinker  an  obvious  truism  will  be 
to  the  zealot  or  the  devout  person  a  "  damnable  heresy."  1 

Two  things  are  to  us  so  self-evident  as  to  deserve  the  name 
of  inevitable  ideas,  viz.,  the  unity  of  God  and  His  moral  char- 
acter ;  yet  how  does  the  case  stand  as  regards  the  religions  ? 
Take  the  Unity.  Monotheism  is  a  very  late  and  an  infrequent 
faith.  With  that  curious  subordination  of  history  to  theory 
which  distinguished  him,  Comte  made  Monotheism  the  last 
step  in  the  first  of  the  three  stages  through  which  man  passes 
in  the  progress  of  his  knowledge.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,. 
Monotheism  is  a  belief  relatively  recent ;  it  has  not  been  uni- 
formly reached,  was  reached  not  by  any  general  consensus,  but 
by  a  small  and  exceptional  fraction  of  the  race,  a  single  desert 
tribe,  from  whom  all  civilized  men  have  received  it.  To-day 
Polytheism  extends  far  further  than  Monotheism,  for  it  is 
easier  and  more  natural  to  man  to  embody  in  everything  the 
Divine  which  he  finds  everywhere,  to  localize  it,  to  split  it  up 
as  it  were  into  a  multitude  of  definite  and  tractable  individ- 
uals, than  to  refine  it  into  an  infinite  personality,  too  abstract 
to  be  felt.  But  unless  God  be  One  He  cannot  be  moral  ;  in 
a  multitude  of  deities  morality  is  dissolved,  for  each  of  the 
multitude  being  divine  has  his  own  laws  and  does  what  is 
right  in  his  own  eyes.  It  is  a  matter  of  history  that  Polythe- 
isms are  by  nature  either  unmoral  or  immoral.  It  is  hard  for 
us  to  conceive  any  sort  of  vice  as  godliness,  or  a  pious  man  as 
other  than  virtuous.  But  our  difficulty,  which  is  due  to  cen- 
turies of  Christian  discipline,  is  one  no  ancient  Greek  would 
have  felt,  and  no  modern  Hindu,  or  any  modern  savage  who 

1  2  Peter  ii.  I. 


ARE    RARE    IDEAS    IN    RELIGION  539 

worships  as  nature  bids  him,  would  feel.  We  must  have  one 
God  before  we  can  have  the  idea  of  a  moral  deity  whose  will 
is  absolute  law.  But  the  moment  this  point  is  gained  we  are 
faced  by  difficulties  of  another  order.  On  the  one  side  the 
philosopher  lays  hold  of  the  Monotheistic  idea,  elaborates  it 
logically,  induces  it  to  an  abstraction,  translates  it  into  the 
terms  of  the  schools,  names  it  Substance  or  Entity,  Nature  or 
Humanity,  the  Infinite  or  even  the  Unknown  ;  but  the  idea  so 
transformed  has  ceased  to  be  the  living  God  which  religion 
needs  in  order  to  live.  On  the  other  side  there  operate  the 
sensuous  temper  and  tendencies  of  the  people.  They  cannot 
have  a  God  afar  off,  they  must  have  Him  near  at  hand,  mani- 
fest, palpable,  living  to  spirit  by  being  real  to  sense.  Hence 
even  within  Christianity  we  find  the  energies  of  the  Deity  and 
His  means  of  intercourse  with  man  placed  in  stones,  in  tem- 
ples, in  images,  in  rites,  nay,  in  the  very  garments  men  may 
wear  as  they  worship.  Men,  indeed,  will  make  anything  into 
a  god,  if  so  be  they  can  get  command  of  the  god  they  fear. 

§  II.     Chrisfs  Interpretation  of  God 

The  abstract  question,  then,  with  which  our  discussion 
began,  now  assumes  a  much  more  concrete  form  :  How  far 
max-  it  be  justly  claimed  that  God,  as  interpreted  through 
Jesus  Christ,  has  become,  or  is  capable  of  becoming,  the  God 
of  a  universal  religion  ?  The  positions  assumed  from  our 
previous  argument  are  :  (a)  The  creative  pre-eminence  in 
religious  history  of  Jesus  Christ  ;  (/3)  the  special  type  of 
religion  embodied  in  His  character  and  life  ;  (7)  the  inter- 
pretation of  His  person  by  Himself,  His  disciples  and 
apostles  as  containing  (l)  distinctive  ideas  of  God  and  man  ; 
'2]  the  terms  on  which  God  comes  to  man,  and  man  can  find 
access  to  God  ;  and  (3)  the  modes  in  which  man  mav 
worship  I  lim. 

One    or    two    points    suggested    by    the     phrasing    of    the 


540  THE  INTERPRETER  DOES  NOT  SUPERSEDE 

question  must  be  considered,  (a)  God  is  said  to  be  inter- 
preted "  through  Christ,"  not  "by"  Him.  Interpretation  "by 
Christ "  would  be  limited  to  His  teaching,  what  He  said 
as  expressing  what  He  thought  concerning  God ;  but  inter- 
pretation "  through  Christ,"  while  it  does  not  exclude  the 
teaching,  includes  the  person  and  character  as  well ;  what 
others  thought  concerning  God  because  they  thought  as  they 
did  of  Christ  (/8)  To  interpret  God  is  not  to  create  man's 
knowledge  of  Him,  though  it  may  be  to  correct  or  perfect 
that  knowledge.  Men  had  known  God  and  believed  in  Him 
before  Christ  came,  as  they  still  do  where  they  have  never 
heard  of  Him.  Without  the  knowledge  that  existed  before 
and  apart  from  Him,  the  interpretation  could  not  be  under- 
stood. This  means  that  He  stands  in  an  order  governed 
by  law,  that  He  completes  a  process  which  has  been  going 
on  ever  since  the  birth  of  man,  and  still  goes  on  wherever 
man  is.  Christ  is  more  of  a  response  to  a  nature  dissatisfied 
with  its  own  discoveries  and  knowledge,  than  an  absolute 
miracle  which  violates  all  that  nature's  laws.  (7)  The  God 
He  interprets  is  not  an  object  of  speculative  thought,  the 
causal  or  the  synthetic  idea  of  the  nature  we  study  ;  but  He 
is  an  object  of  veneration,  a  Being  man  seeks  to  know  that 
he  may  love  and  worship.  What  we  have  to  do  with,  then,  is 
not  the  metaphysical  reality  or  philosophical  warrant  of  the 
belief,  but  its  religious  value  and  efficiency,  whether  it  has 
power  to  displace  the  ideas  which  the  local  cults  have  throned 
so  firmly  in  the  soul,  and  whether  it  has  the  qualities  capable 
of  organizing  a  fitting  form  for  man's  highest  and  most 
potent  idea.  (5)  The  interpreter  brings  to  more  perfect 
knowledge  the  God  in  whose  name  Fie  speaks,  but  does  not 
supersede  Him.  While  He  Himself  was  construed  as  the 
God  within  God,  the  hands  as  it  were  by  which  Deity  held 
and  guided  and  saved  humanity,  yet  He  was  not,  in  spite  of 
strong  tendencies  to  the  personification  and  apotheosis  here 
of  an  abstract  nature,  there  of  an  ethical  quality,  set  as  an 


THE   GOD    HE    INTERPRETS  541 

independent  and  isolated  Divine  Being  over  against  the  God- 
head. And  this  is  the  more  remarkable  as  supersession  is 
a  process  so  common  in  the  religions  as  to  be  entitled  to  be 
termed  uniform  and  constant.  It  finds  barbarous  expression 
in  Greek  mythology,  especially  as  it  is  found  in  Hesiod. 
Zeus,  though  the  father  of  gods  and  men,  is  himself  a  son 
who  supplanted  a  father,  who  had  attempted  to  keep  his 
supremacy  by  devouring  his  own  offspring.  In  the  Rigvcda 
we  can  trace  the  process  by  which  Indra  displaces  Varuna, 
just  as  he  had  earlier  stepped  into  the  seat  of  Dyaus,  and 
as  all  the  gods  vanished  later  into  the  bosom  of  Brahma, 
the  youngest  of  the  Vedic  deities,  who  yet  with  his  name 
slightly  changed,  so  as  to  denote  the  highest  philosophical 
idea,  swallowed  up  all  the  older  gods.  In  the  Mahabharata 
we  see  Krishna  rise,  attain  fame,  climb  from  manhood  into 
godhood,  though  the  qualities  and  feats  held  to  prove  him 
divine  are  very  manlike  indeed  ;  and  he  attracts  to  himself, 
as  he  sits  amid  the  high  gods  in  the  Hindu  pantheon,  peculiar 
honours  and  a  special  cult.  But  Christ  reveals  or  interprets 
without  superseding  Deity,  enhances  His  grace  without 
lessening  His  dignity.  He  does  not  break  up  the  unity  of 
God,  for  divided  or  individuated  being  is  never  claimed  for 
Him.  His  own  achievements  do  not  form  into  a  glory  round 
His  head,  eclipsing  the  eternal  Father.  On  the  contrary  He 
at  once  infinitely  enriches  and  unifies  the  object  of  worship. 
He  interprets  without  either  superseding  God,  or  reducing 
His  majesty,  or  dividing  His  honour. 

§   III.      The   God  Christ  Interprets  a    Universal  Ideal 

How  far,  then,  may  we  say  that  God  so  interpreted  through 
Christ  is  a   Deity  who  could   not   be  known  and  worshipped 

without  forming  a  universal  religion? 

I.   Let   us  note  the  action  of  the    Interpreter  on   the  idea. 
God  was  dissociated  from  a  special  State  and  associated  with 


542      GOD    DISSOCIATED   FROM    A    STATE 

a  person  ;  and  this  person  was  conceived  as  the  symbol  of 
humanity,  an  epitome  of  mankind.  It  is  the  characteristic  of 
all  ancient  and  unreformed  religions  to  be  tribal  or  national 
— for  the  nation  is  but  the  larger  tribe ;  and  the  tribe  loves  its 
religion  and  reveres  its  god  because  they  are  its  own,  and  are 
so  bound  up  with  its  order  and  customs  that  their  dissolution 
could  only  signify  its  destruction.  If  a  stranger  wishes  to  be 
admitted  to  the  favour  of  the  god,  or  the  practice  of  the 
religion,  he  must  become  a  member  of  the  tribe,  rebirth  or 
naturalization  being  the  only  way  to  participation  in  its 
most  solemn  rites.  The  sanctuary  was  ever  the  spot  most 
jealously  guarded  against  the  curious  and  prying  alien.  But 
Christ,  as  the  interpretative  personality,  detached  God  from 
the  customs  of  the  tribe,  and  attached  Him  to  the  idea  of  man. 
There  is  nothing  so  universal  as  the  individual  who  is  the 
whole  in  little,  as  there  is  nothing  so  exclusive  as  the  family 
which  must,  to  maintain  its  being  and  its  claims,  keep  its 
blood  pure.  But  Christ,  construed  as  the  ideal  of  humanity, 
shows  what  God  intended  to  be  to  every  man,  and  what 
every  man  ought  to  be  to  God.  He  is  an  illimitable  yet 
concrete  and  historical  person  ;  and  as  such  He  is  at  once 
the  type  of  the  man  who  alone  can  please  God,  and  the 
symbol  of  the  idea  that  one  has  only  to  be  a  man  to  be 
God's,  and  that  the  more  fully  He  inhabits  us  the  more  com- 
pletely human  we  become.  The  family  from  which  Christ 
sprang  disowned  Him,  and  the  act  which  cut  Him  off  was 
like  the  truth  told  in  parable :  it  meant  that  God  had  ceased 
to  be  the  property  of  a  people,  and  become  the  possession 
of  mankind. 

2.  The  change  in  the  medium  through  which  God  was 
known  involved  a  correspondent  change  in  the  way  He  was 
conceived,  i.e.  since  Christ  stood  for  man  without  any  dis- 
tinction of  race,  God,  as  interpreted  through  Him,  was  loosed 
from  the  qualities  that  bound  Him  to  a  peculiar  people.  The 
attribute  of  will  which  had  been  emphasized  to  justify  His 


AND    ASSOCIATED    WITH    MAN  543 

choice  of  Israel,  fell  into  the  background,  and  grace,  which 
is  will  spontaneously  seeking  the  common  good,  came  to  the 
front.  Christ  was  Son  of  God  in  no  figurative  or  incidental 
sense,  but  essentially  ;  and  as  the  moment  never  had  been 
when  there  was  no  Son,  so  there  had  never  been,  and  could 
never  be,  a  moment  when  there  was  or  should  be  no  Father. 
Thus  love  and  fellowship,  affinity  and  affection  were  bound 
up  with  the  very  being  of  God.  He  could  not  be  conceived 
as  loveless  thought,  or  as  abstract  substance,  or  as  almighty 
energy,  so  long  as  the  terms  Father  and  Son  could  be  used 
to  denote  eternal  facts  and  relations  essential  to  His  Deity. 
But  even  more  significant  was  the  correlative  change  in  the 
conception  of  His  manward  activities  and  relations.  To 
conceive  the  typical  Man  as  essentially  Son  was  to  be  driven 
to  think  of  humanity  in  the  terms  of  sonship.  If  by  the 
very  constitution  of  His  being  God  was  a  Father,  man  by 
the  very  fact  of  his  creation  in  Christ  was  constituted  a  son. 
And  if  collective  man  was  God's  son,  it  followed  that  God 
was  man's  Father,  and  so  there  stepped  into  the  place  of  the 
tribal  deity  the  universal  Fatherhood.  Before  we  can  guess 
what  this  signified,  we  must  have  studied  the  spirit,  traced  the 
history,  watched  the  action  and  the  effects  of  the  religions. 
To  see  how  they  have  created  caste,  sanctioned  and  magnified 
the  pride  of  blood,  emphasized  the  distinctions  of  colour  and 
race,  justified  the  inhumanity  of  man  to  man,  and  then  to 
discover  how  a  religion  has  been  based  on  a  Fatherhood  too 
universal  cither  to  know  or  to  show  "  respect  of  persons,"  is 
as  if  one  were  suddenly  taken  from  the  study  of  crippling 
disease  to  the  contemplation  of  sunny  and  buoyant  health. 
The  provincialism  which  justifies  the  jealousy  and  injustice  <>f 
deity,  his  partiality  for  his  own  race,  his  insincerities  and  even 
ferocities  to  other  races,  directly  hinders  the  birth  and  the 
growth  of  the  idea  of  humanity,  and  encourages  the  terror 
which  regards  blood  as  the  proper  food  of  the  gods.  But 
when  man  thought  of  God  in  the  terms  of  ideal  humanity,  as 


544          MAN    DIGNIFIED,    GOD    HUMANIZED 

impersonated  in  Jesus  Christ,  his  religion  was  at  once  uni- 
versalized ;  the  more  thoroughly  he  believed,  and  the  more 
piously  he  worshipped,  the  more  humane  he  became  in  faith. 
The  religion  which  did  honour  to  the  God  who  loved  all  men 
required  the  service  of  all  mankind. 

3.  But  the  conception  of  man  was  changed  as  well  as  that 
of  God.  We  may  without  extravagance  say  that  man  had 
never  come  by  his  rights  in  religion  ;  for  either,  where  God 
was  great  and  of  infinite  majesty,  he  had  been  humbled  into 
the  dust ;  or,  where  God  was  very  terrible,  he  had  been  degra- 
ded into  an  instrument  that  could  be  broken  and  cast  away, 
or  depraved  into  a  coward  who  would  offer  the  fruit  of  his 
body  for  the  sin  of  his  soul  ;  or,  where  God  was  complaisant, 
he  had  taken  him  into  his  own  hands  and  done  with  him  as 
he  pleased.  To  find  a  fit  relation  or  a  seemly  equilibrium 
between  God  and  man  is  a  thing  hard  enough  to  be  esteemed 
impossible,  yet  this  was  what  Christ  achieved.  He  made 
man  stand  upright  before  God,  conscious  of  his  dignity.  It 
does  not  become  a  being  of  infinite  promise  to  lie  prone 
in  the  dust,  even  before  the  Infinite  Majesty.  To  feel  what 
it  is  to  be  the  eternal  Father's  son,  is  to  learn  to  behave  as  a 
son,  possessed  of  his  privileges  as  well  as  bound  by  his  duties  ; 
and  it  is  also  to  feel  that  all  sons  are  equal  in  their  potential, 
though  not  perhaps  in  their  realized  worth.  Hence  the 
Christian  idea  created  two  novel  notions  as  to  man  :  the  value 
of  the  unit  and  the  unity  of  the  race.  The  ancient  nations 
that  most  valued  their  collective  existence  attached  least 
value  to  the  individual  man.  If  he  was  a  slave,  he  was  but  a 
chattel  ;  if  he  was  an  alien,  his  own  gods  might  care  for  him, 
the  native  gods  had  other  and  better  things  to  do.  If  his  colour 
or  his  stature  was  not  theirs,  he  would  be  described  in  terms 
more  appropriate  to  a  brute  than  to  a  man  ;  and  if  his  worship 
was  noticed,  his  gods  were  said  to  be  devils  rather  than  deities. 
Refinement,  intercourse,  the  decay  of  the  martial  spirit  and 
the  rise  of  the  great  empires  may  have  created  in  the  \\  est 


THE    SANCTITY   OF    MAN    AND   LIFE      545 

a  milder  temper  and  more  restrained  speech,  but  they  did  not 
add  to  the  dignity  of  the  individual.  We  admire  the  pyramids 
and  temples  of  Egypt,  but  forget  the  misery  of  the  men 
whose  forced  labour  built  them,  or  the  pride  of  the  king  who 
wanted  a  splendid  mausoleum,  and  thought,  if  he  thought  at 
all  on  the  matter,  that  to  sacrifice  some  thousands  of  men 
in  building  it  made  it  all  the  fitter  a  tomb  for  a  king.  And 
so  it  seems  to  China,  with  its  hundreds  of  millions  of  men, 
as  if  the  waste  of  man  by  disease  or  the  fierce  forces  of 
nature  mattered  little ;  there  is  the  more  to  divide  among 
the  living  if  there  are  fewer  mouths  to  be  fed.  We  never 
cease  to  wonder  at  the  art  and  literature  of  Athens,  both 
so  perfect  in  form,  but  we  seldom  imagine  what  is  meant 
by  the  simple  fact  that  when  her  life  was  bravest  and  her 
struggle  hardest  she  had  barely  five  thousand  citizens,  while 
of  her  slaves  twenty  thousand  could  desert  to  the  enemy. 
Roman  law  was  remarkable  for  its  love  of  justice  and  its 
care  for  human  rights  ;  but  to  the  Roman  law  the  slave  was 
a  thing  and  no  man,  while  Roman  men  were  never  so  pitiless 
to  others  as  when  they  were  most  concerned  about  their  own 
privileges.  And  to-day  the  Hindu  judges  life  by  other 
standards  and  reads  it  with  other  eyes  than  ours.  To  him 
indeed  life,  simply  as  animal  life,  is  sacred,  a  thing  which 
he  must  not  destroy ;  yet  the  feeling  of  its  sanctity  does 
not  extend  to  the  human  personality,  at  least  as  the  West 
understands  it.  If  he  argues  as  the  divine  charioteer  in  the 
BJiagavadgita  does,  he  will  hold  that  since  man's  being  is 
indestructible,  a  mere  moment  in  the  circle  of  everlasting 
change,  killing  is  no  murder  ;  but  he  may  add  for  himself 
that  to  lose  one's  life  in  trying  to  rescue  others  from  the 
jaws  of  famine  and  pestilence,  is  a  most  needless  ex- 
travagance of  mercy.  The  Englishman  is — because  of  his 
passion  to  save  the  lives  of  men,  combined  with  his  pleasure 
in  killing  wild  animals,  a  pleasure  great  in  proportion  to  the 
\vildness  of  the  animal — a  standing  puzzle  to  the  Hindu  ;  but 
i-.C.R.  35 


546  MAN    ENHANCED    IN   VALUE 

if  he  only  could  read  the  Englishman  through  his  religion,  he 
would  see  that  the  enthusiasm  for  the  saving  of  men  was  the 
point  where  Christ  had  touched  him,  and  made  him  so 
different  in  religion  from  what  he  is  by  nature.  By  nature 
he  kills  the  tiger  for  sport,  delights  in  perils  and  adventures, 
and  finds  amusement  in  facing  or  causing  death  in  the  jungle  ; 
but  by  religion  he  has  become  one  who  would  die  to  save  a 
man  from  death,  whether  he  be  a  man  of  high  caste,  or  of  low 
caste,  or  of  no  caste.  And  how  is  it  that  man  has  become  to 
the  higher  Christian  peoples  a  being  of  such  infinite  pos- 
sibilities and  incalculable  value  that  he  must  cease  to  be  a 
slave,  and  be  protected  in  his  life  and  in  his  rights,  however 
mean  his  nature  and  low  his  culture  ?  How  has  it  come  about 
that  the  most  truculent  of  races  has  come  to  act  as  if  it  were 
a  fitter  and  more  heroic  thing  for  a  man  to  sacrifice  himself  in 
saving  life  than  to  assert  himself  in  destroying  it  ?  There  is 
but  one  answer  possible :  it  is  due  to  the  idea  in  his  religion 
which  holds  him  most  strongly,  and  which  never,  whatever 
may  happen  to  his  faith,  quite  loses  its  grasp  upon  his 
conduct,  that  he  ought  to  do  for  others  what  Christ  did  for 
him.  He  max-  die  for  man,  but  he  cannot  despise  him.  If 
he  believes  that  Christ  took  his  human  nature,  he  must  also 
believe  that  He  dignified  the  nature  He  bore.  Man  seen 
through  His  humanity  becomes  a  being  of  transcendent  value  ; 
the  nature  which  has  been  put  of  God  to  the  most  gracious 
of  all  uses  is  a  nature  that  can  be  no  more  despised  or  mis- 
handled. To  the  strong  it  was  an  imperious  duty  to  help  the 
weak,  and  a  tiling  sternly  forbidden  to  destroy  the  brother 
for  whom  Christ  died.  And  so  the  religion  began  as  a 
recreative  humanity,  which  made  it  impossible  to  the  parent 
to  expose  his  child,  or  to  the  crowd  to  make  holiday  in  the 
amphitheatre  where  the  trembling  man  was  thrown  to  the 
wild  beast,  or  to  the  freeman  to  hold  a  brother  man  as  his 
slave. 

But  this  value  of  the  individual   needed   for  its  full  sisrnifi- 


AND   AS    A    RACE    UNIFIED  547 

cance  another  and  correlative  idea,  the  unity  of  the  race.1 
The  most  abstract  of  ideas  was  here  destined  to  prove  the 
most  potent  of  practical  beliefs.  One  person  conceived  as  the 
symbol  or  epitome  of  man,  in  whose  life  all  lived,  in  whose 
death  all  died,  achieved  the  unification  of  mankind.  The 
unity  as  it  was  held  in  ancient  philosophy,  especially  by  the 
Stoics,  was  a  noble  doctrine,  but  it  remained  a  doctrine,  an 
ideal  which  is  an  abstract ;  it  did  not  walk  about  in  the  market- 
place and  deal  with  actual  men.  But  the  unity  which  Christ 
embodied  was  not  ideal  only,  it  was  ethical  and  actual.  The 
churches  came  into  being  as  attempts  to  realize  it,  and  these 
attempts  grew  into  a  fuller  consciousness  of  what  it  signified. 
Ideals  may  take  centuries  to  grow  into  realities,  but  they  do 
grow,  and  the  nearer  the  realities  come  the  more  infinite  do  the 
ideals  appear.  And  this  is  pre-eminently  true  of  this  belief. 
We  are  but  beginning  to  understand  the  responsibilities 
and  obligations  which  lie  upon  the  whole  family  of  man  for 
each  member,  and  which  lie  upon  each  member  for  the  family 
as  a  whole  as  well  as  for  its  several  parts.  Humanity  as  a 
whole  was  responsible  for  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  but  though 
He  suffered  at  its  hands  He  was  not  free  to  inflict  upon  it 
suffering.  On  the  contrary,  His  grace  bound  Him  to  submit 
that  He  might  conquer,  to  die  that  He  and  His  might  live. 
He  saw  that  sin  as  collective,  inherent  and  inherited,  rooted 
in  nature  and  by  nature  propagated,  was  more  a  misfortune 
than  a  crime,  and  that  sin  as  personal,  active  and  expressed 
in  acts,  was  a  crime,  though  it  might  begin  in  misfortune. 
And  He  further  saw  that  while  it  was  the  nature  of  the  evil  to 
harm  the  good,  it  was  the  duty  and  function  of  the  good  to 
save  the  evil.  And  so  as  the  blameless  Brother  of  a  guilt}' 
family  He  bore  the  family's  guilt,  so  bore  it  that  all  might 
learn  of  Him  how  to  escape  the  sin  that  was  sorrow  and 
caused  death. 

Ante,  pp.  444  fif. 


548      FAITH    AS    IT    IS    IN   THE   CHRISTIAN 

§  IV.     The  Condition  of  Realization 

1.  But  quite  as  significant  as  the  ideas  is  the  condition  of 
their  appropriation,  the  act   and   attitude  of  mind — for  it  is 
both — termed  faith.     It  is  an  intellectual  act,  for  it  is  a  form 
of  knowledge  ;  it  is  an  emotional  attitude  and  activity,  for  it 
trusts  persons  and  works  by  love  ;  it  is  a  moral  intuition,  for 
it   sees  obligation  in  truth  and  right  in  duty.     It  is  not  a 
single  or  occasional  act,  though   it  may  be  compared  to  a 
vision   which  for  a  moment   looks  into   eternity  and   never 
forgets  what  it  has  seen ;  but  it  is  continuous  communion 
with  the  things  the  vision  saw.     Faith  as  knowledge  studies 
the  historical  person,  but  as  belief  it  sees   in   the  ideal  the 
symbol  of  God  and  the  universe.     The  historical  person  is 
studied  as  if  He  were  the  realized  religion,  and  He  must  be 
known  that  He  may  be  imitated  and  obeyed.     The  ideal  is 
contemplated  that  the  soul  may  stand  face  to  face  with  God, 
and  endure  as  seeing  Him  who  is  invisible.     In  both  aspects, 
as  knowledge  and  as  vision,  faith  is  a  receptivity  ;  it  is  man 
standing  open  to  the   touch   and    action  of  the  eternal,  yet 
as  also  sensitive  and   active,  holding  fast  to  what  has  been 
received.       Its    antithesis  is  the   work  which   creates    merit, 
the  action  which  establishes  a  claim  to  reward  ;  but  its  corre- 
lative is  grace,  the  spontaneous  energy  of  the  God  who  made 
man  for  Himself,  effecting  His  conscious  appropriation  by  the 
man  He  made. 

2.  Now  faith,  so  understood,  is  an  idea   most  character- 
istic of  the  Christian  religion  ;  in  no  other  does  it  hold  the 
same  place  or  fulfil  the  same  functions.      This   is,  no    doubt, 
partly  due  to  the  kind  and  quality  of  the  associated  ideas  ;  it 
belongs  to  their  household,  has  the  face  and  features  distinct- 
ive of  the  family.     But  this  only  emphasizes  the  distinction  of 
the  religion  as  a  religion.     Those  before  and  around    it   were 
constituted  by  acts  and  customs  rather  than  by  beliefs  ;  and 
were  more   methods  of  approaching  God  than  ways  by  which 


AND    IN    OTHER    RELIGIONS  549 

He  could  approach  us.  They  threw  the  burden  of  reconciliation 
on  man  and  bade  him  do  the  things  or  use  the  means  that 
would  give  him  acceptance  with  God.  The  Christian  was  the 
first  religion,  as  a  religion,  to  say  that  custom  has  no  worth, 
that  work  has  no  merit,  that  the  only  thing  that  can  avail  be- 
fore God  is  the  righteousness  He  gives  and  faith  receives.  In 
Greece,  religion  was  a  matter  of  oracles  and  shrines,  of  festivals 
national  and  civil,  of  conformity  to  law  and  custom,  as  both 
Protagoras  and  Sokrates  found  to  their  cost.  Men  might  be- 
lieve in  the  value  of  certain  acts  or  the  efficacy  of  certain 
institutions  ;  but  religion  was  too  nearly  identical  with  these 
to  lay  much  stress  on  the  faith  that  trusted  the  truth  and 
acquired  no  merit.  Its  absence  in  the  religion  is  reflected  in 
the  schools,  where  it  has  no  recognition  in  a  religious  sense 
till  we  come  to  Proclus,  who,  in  what  is  more  a  borrowed  than 
a  native  tongue,  speaks  of  faith  as  higher  than  knowledge  and 
better  than  love,  for  love  leads  us  only  to  the  beautiful,  but 
faith  to  God.  The  Roman  worship  consisted  pre-eminently 
in  expressions  of  joy,  in  lays  and  songs,  in  games  and  dances, 
and,  above  all,  in  banquets,  "  being  grounded  essentially  on 
mail's  enjoyment  of  earthly  pleasures,  and  only  in  a  sub- 
ordinate degree  on  his  fear  of  the  wild  forces  of  nature." 
In  India  the  customs  and  laws  of  religion  surround  a  man 
from  his  birth,  govern  his  life  as  a  whole,  as  well  as  its  indi- 
vidual parts,  his  childhood,  youth,  manhood,  and  old  age,  his 
years,  his  months,  his  very  days,  but  faith  is  no  part  of  it. 
Certain  philosophical  sects  have  indeed  made  of  Bliakti, 
which  under  one  aspect  is  devotion,  and  under  another 
faith,  a  cardinal  doctrine  ;  but  while  they  ma}-  have  known 
it,  the  multitude  of  religions  we  call  Hinduism  has  not.  The 
notion  was  native  to  prophetic  Hebraism,  and  was  fitly 
associated  with  the-  promise  and  its  ethical  Monotheism  ;  but 
institutional  Judaism  was  too  much  concerned  with  the  acts 
and  articles  of  worship  to  care  for  faith.  Hence  Christianity, 
1  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome,  i.  221. 


55C  A   QUESTION    AND    ITS    ANSWER 

in  making  faith  the  subjective  pivot  of  religion,  separated 
itself  from  uniform  and  invariable  custom,  boldly  made  itself 
independent  of  usage  and  institution,  and  brought  the  in- 
dividual man  and  the  absolute  God  face  to  face.  It  was  the 
only  mode  in  which  a  religion  of  universal  ideas  could  have 
been  realized  by  universal  man. 

This  discussion  leaves  us  with  a  question  we  must  ask, 
though  we  shall  not  attempt  to  give  it  the  answer  it  deserves 
and  requires  :  What  precisely  did  Christ,  by  these  ideas  and 
the  condition  of  their  realization,  accomplish  for  religion?  It  is 
a  small  thing  to  say,  He  made  a  universal  religion  possible  ;  it 
is  a  greater  thing  to  add,  The  religion  He  made  possible  is  one 
that  ought  to  be  universal,  for  its  ideal  is  the  humanest  and 
the  most  beneficent  that  has  ever  come  to  man.  He  com- 
pletely moralized  Deity,  and  therefore  religion ;  and  so  made  it 
possible — nay,  obligatory  and  imperative — to  moralize  the 
whole  life  of  man,  individual  and  collective.  His  moral  ideal 
expressed  the  beneficence  of  an  infinite  will,  yet  as  imperson- 
ated in  what  we  may  term  an  actual  yet  universal  Man.  It 
was  transcendental  as  God,  it  was  immanent  as  mind  ;  and 
as  incarnated  in  a  religion,  it  concentrated  the  energies  of 
the  eternal  for  realization  in  the  modes  of  time.  If  this  can 
be  said  of  Christ,  what  higher  work  could  be  ascribed  to  God  ? 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    IDEAL   RELIGION    AND   WORSHIP 

WORSHIP  as  we  have  seen  l  is  as  essential  as  belief  to 
religion.  The  man  who  thinks  of  God,  if  he  thinks 
truly,  must  worship  Him,  for  without  this  even  nature  would 
not  be  content.  But  is  worship  possible  without  some  in- 
stitution ?  and  is  an  institution,  which  must  bear  the  marks  of 
time  and  place,  possible  in  a  universal  religion  ?  and  what  is 
a  religion  without  worship  save  a  philosophy  or  a  system  of 
more  or  less  reasoned  ideas  ? 

Worship  and  belief  differ  in  the  nature  and  tendency  of  their 
action  in  religion  ;  belief  is  the  freer  and  the  more  expan- 
sive, worship  is  the  more  traditional  and  local.  Thought  is 
more  open  and  accessible  to  new  influences  than  custom, 
changes  its  forms  more  easily,  and  gains  more  by  the  change. 
And  hence  the  frequency  of  such  phenomena  as  the  religion 
of  Israel  exhibited — the  conflicts  of  the  universal,  the  Mono- 
theistic idea,  with  the  local  and  consuetudinary,  the  spirit  and 
institutions  of  the  tribe.2  Now  these  latter  represent  two 
forces  or  tendencies,  a  localizing,  embodied  in  a  place,  and  an 
externalizing,  embodied  in  institutions. 

§  I.     Place  as   it   Affects    Worship 

I.  The  holy  place  is  perhaps  the  last  and  most  inveterate 
of  the  forms  which  tribal  particularism  assumes.  It  may  be 
described  as  the  spot  or  the  structure  where  the  people  of  a 

1  Ante,  pp.  480-481.  -  Ante  pp.   244-257. 


552  WHY   PLACES    BECOME    HOLY 

religion  feel  that  they  can  offer  the  most  acceptable 
worship  to  their  God.  Its  sacred  character  is  seldom  due  to 
a  single  cause,  though  complex  causes  may  from  some  simple 
occasion  become  active.  If  we  take  the  word  "reason"  as 
subsuming  both  cause  and  occasion,  we  should  say  that  the 
reasons  why  a  place  becomes  holy  may  be  described  as  either 
physical,  mythological,  traditional,  or  historical.  The  physical 
reasons,  though  they  never  act  without  the  impulse  of  a  be- 
lief which  is  seeking  to  become  articulate,  may  be  a  cave,  as 
at  Delphi ;  or  a  well  whose  waters  have  some  peculiar  virtue, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  innumerable  holy  wells  of  ancient  religion 
and  mediaeval  legend,  or  whose  springs  make  an  oasis  in  the 
desert,  as  at  the  shrine  of  Jupiter  Ammon,  which  Alexander 
visited ;  or  it  may  be  a  tree  through  whose  murmuring 
branches  the  god  is  heard  to  speak,  as  at  Dodona.  The  myth- 
ological reasons,  which  never  act  without  the  physical,  are  the 
beliefs  which  place  the  gods  either  on  special  mountains, 
as  the  Greek  seated  his  on  Olympus  or  the  Hindu  his  on  Kai- 
lasa,  the  Himalayas,  "  formed  by  Visvakarman,  in  colour  like 
a  brilliant  cloud  and  decorated  with  gold,"  whence  they  could 
hurl  the  thunderbolt  or  blow  from  their  nostrils  the  devour- 
ing blast ;  or  in  some  forest  glade,  where  life  does  its  silent 
but  creative  work,  like  the  Germans  of  Tacitus,  who  "  lucos 
ac  nemora  consecrant,  deorumque  nominibus  appellant  se- 
cretum  illud,  quod  sola  reverentia  vident,"1  or  like  the  Arician 
"  templum  nemorale  Dianse."  2  The  traditional  reasons  may 
be  the  association  of  a  district  with  some  person  or  event,  like 
the  birth  of  a  god,  the  burial  of  a  saint,  the  wisdom  of  a 
teacher,  or  a  miraculous  appearance  of  deity  ;  and  to  this  class 
of  places  belong  those  regions  of  the  Nile,  where  the  weeping 
Isis  wandered  in  search  of  the  dismembered  Osiris  ;  Mathura, 
where  the  Yadavas  thought  Krishna  achieved  divine  fame  ; 
Benares,  where  the  dread  Siva  rolled  the  mighty  river  which 

1  Gennnnia,  IK. 

2  Ovid,  Ars  Ainat.  i.  259  ;  cf.  F<is/i,  vi.  59 


THEIR    ACTION    ON    THE    RELIGION        553 

had  descended  out  of  heaven  upon  his  head  ;  Ayodha,  holy 
land  of  the  Buddhists,  where  the  Master  was  born  and  made 
the  great  renunciation  ;  and  the  multitudinous  Catholic  shrines 
where,  as  at  Lourdes,  the  Virgin  has  appeared  to  some  devout 
and  ecstatic  maid.  The  historical  reasons  belong  either  to  the 
life  of  a  people,  like  those  that  made  Jerusalem,  because  the 
city  of  their  great  king  and  the  capital  of  their  race,  seem 
to  the  Jews  the  fit  home  of  their  God  ;  or  to  the  recorded 
experiences  of  some  person,  like  those  that  made  Mecca,  the 
city  where  his  youth  had  been  passed,  where  his  ancestors  had 
dwelt,  and  whither  the  tribes  of  Arabia  had  for  centuries 
gone  to  high  festivals  and  such  worship  as  they  knew,  so  dear 
and  so  delightful  to  Mohammed. 

Now,  under  these  varied  forms,  different  as  they  may 
seem,  the  action  of  place  is  in  two  respects  the  same,  it  local- 
izes and  it  externalizes,  working  the  more  disastrously  the 
purer  and  the  broader  the  religion  is.  Thus  sanctity  comes  to 
have  a  physical  cause,  bodily  contact  with  the  sacred  object 
to  have  a  specific  religious  value.  The  water  that  flows  past 
the  place  becomes  sacred,  and  to  bathe  in  the  Jordan  or  the 
Ganges,  to  drink  of  the  well  Zem  Zem,  or  of  the  spring  where 
the  saint  quenched  his  thirst,  or  above  which  the  Virgin  ap- 
peared, is  either  to  be  cleansed  from  sin  or  to  acquire  peculiar 
merit.  If  the  pilgrim  cannot  go  to  the  water,  it  can  be 
brought  to  him  ;  and  for  a  price  he  buys  his  reward.  The 
spot  which  the  god  touched,  the  cell  where  the  saint  lived,  the 
cave  where  the  prophet  hid  can  be  seen  and  handled  ;  and 
the  pilgrim  feels  as  if  he  had  done  honour  to  the  god  and 
become  worthier  of  heaven.  The  multitudes  who  go  on  pil- 
grimage are  composed  of  persons  intent  on  performing  a 
religious  duty,  but  they  soon  grow  mixed,  and  the  more 
mixed  they  grow  the  less  devout  they  get,  till  what  began  in 
fervour  may  end  in  licence  and  riot.  The  people  who  keep 
the  holy  places  grow  as  holy  as  they  ;  priests  increase,  live 
on  the  alms  and  offerings  of  the  faithful  ;  and  the  industry  of 


554        PLACES    IN   JUDAISM    AND    ISLAM 

the  place  centres  in  the  religion,  and  it  becomes  a  commodity 
made  and  marketable,  represented  by  articles  that  can  be 
bought  and  sold.  And  so  relics  and  memorials  which  can 
make  his  worship  efficacious  are  manufactured,  legends  are 
invented  to  enhance  the  reputation  of  the  god  and  the  re- 
ligious value  of  the  place.  The  inevitable  outcome  is  a 
materialized  and  localized  deity  and  a  coarsened  worship. 
And  this  is  a  saying  every  holy  place  in  the  world  illustrates 
if  it  does  not  justify. 

2.  But  here  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  :  a  local  cult  may 
suit  the  genius  and  type  of  a  religion  just  as  a  side  chapel  falls 
in  with  the  design  of  a  cathedral ;  but  it  is  an  altogether  different 
matter  where  the  religion  is  universal  in  idea  and  intention, 
while  the  place  where  men  must  worship,  if  they  would 
worship  acceptably,  is  but  one.  There  are  two  examples  of 
this  inconsistency  between  idea  and  place,  Judaism  and  Islam, 
but  with  most  significant  differences.  Jerusalem  was  sym- 
bolical of  the  Jew,  and  though  it  perished  he  survived,  and 
his  God  so  survived  with  him  that  ever  since  they  have  dwelt 
together,  God  inseparable  from  the  people  and  the  people 
from  God.  To  Mohammed,  his  people  and  land  were  alike 
holy  ;  the  Arab  was  to  conquer  the  world,  but  not  to  forsake 
Arabia ;  thither,  however  far  he  wandered,  he  was  ever  to 
return,  and  the  races  he  subdued  to  the  faith  were  to  come  as 
pilgrims  to  the  city  of  God  and  His  prophet.  But  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Arab  arms  destroyed  the  sanctity  and  separateness 
of  the  Arab  people,  though  it  only  enhanced  the  sacredness 
of  Mecca.  The  city  towards  which  the  Moslim  pray  is  a 
city  their  feet  must  stand  within  if  they  would  see  God. 
But  this  localization  of  the  highest  act  of  worship  keeps  the 
religion  racial,  oriental,  semi-barbaric,  governed  by  Arab 
standards,  ever  confounded  by  the  offer  to  physical  endurance 
and  achievement  of  those  rewards  which  should  be  reserved 
for  spiritual  excellence.  Emancipation  from  place  is  thus  a 
necessity  in  the  case  of  a  religion  that  would  be  co- 


CHRIST    SUBSTITUTED   FOR    PLACE       555 

extensive  with    man,  and    sufficient    for   his    nature  and  its 
needs. 

3.  Now  this  emancipation  Christ  achieved,  and  His  is  the 
only  religion  which  has  achieved  it.  The  association  of  wor- 
ship with  His  person  completely  dissociated  it  from  place,  and 
it  became  possible  to  approach  God  anywhere,  provided  He 
was  approached  through  Him.  For  union  with  Him  needs 
but  faith ;  the  man  who  believes  in  the  Son  of  God  is  iden- 
tified with  Christ,  and  when  he  worships  it  is  as  if  Jesus 
worshipped.  Since  the  act  that  relates  the  soul  to  the  person 
through  whom  it  finds  acceptance  is  inner  and  spiritual, 
place  and  time  are  alike  irrelevant,  the  spirit  and  the  truth 
are  all  in  all.  Hence,  too,  the  one  medium  is  more  ample 
than  an  infinity  of  local  media,  for  their  variety  affects  many 
things, — God,  the  sort  of  worship  He  approves,  the  acts  that 
constitute  it,  the  persons  by  whom  and  through  whom  it 
may  be  offered.  A  multitude  of  shrines  means  a  multitude  of 
deities,  and  not  simply  of  men  and  the  homes  where  they  live. 
The  man  who  worships  the  Virgin  or  prays  to  St.  Joseph 
for  a  boon  to  himself  or  an  evil  to  his  enemy,  who  goes  on 
pilgrimage  to  the  tomb  of  St.  Antony  at  Padua,  or  seeks 
from  St.  Francis  at  the  Portiuncula  healing  for  body  or 
soul,  finds  in  each  place  a  different  god,  a  being  complexioned 
by  the  medium  through  which  he  is  approached.  But  the 
one  Mediator  does  not  lower  God  to  the  sensuous  needs  of 
variable  man,  rather  lifts  man  into  the  spiritual  mood  in  which 
he  feels  his  kinship  with  God.  And  the  union  of  apparent  in- 
compatibilities in  His  person  made  it  all  the  fitter  a  medium 
for  this  high  purpose.  He  inhabits  no  place,  yet  He  fills  all 
time,  which  means  that  there  is  no  spot  where  He  cannot  be 
found  and  no  moment  without  His  presence.  He  is  as  in- 
visible and  impalpable  as  God,  yet  as  audible  and  tangible  as 
man  ;  and,  we  may  add,  to  form  an  image  of  the  image  of 
the  God  no  man  can  see  is  impossible.  And  it  is  unnecessary, 
for  the  Soul  of  Him,  whom  the  art  of  no  graver  and  the  chisel 


556         HOW   IMAGES    DEPRAVE    IDEALS 

of  no  sculptor  can  represent,  lives  incarnate  in  speech  which 
all  men  can  hear  or  read. 

And  this  has  a  high  significance;  the  pictures  which  men 
delight  to  paint,  or  the  statues  they  carve  of  Jesus  on  the 
cross  or  in  the  tomb,  and  which  women  love  tearfully  to 
kneel  before,  are  not  images  of  the  Christ,  nor  in  any  sense 
representations  of  Him.  There  is  nothing  that  fills  me  with 
darker  horror  or  deeper  aversion  than  the  apotheosis  of 
wounds  and  death  which  the  Roman  Church  offers  as  its 
image  of  the  Christ.  Some  months  ago  I  stood  in  an  Italian 
cathedral ;  it  had  been  built  by  the  wickedest,  the  fiercest,  the 
most  pagan,  and  probably  the  most  learned  of  the  Malatesti. 
Within  it  was  the  sarcophagus  which  held  his  remains,  with 
his  mocking  inscription  graven  upon  it,  and  the  chapel 
where  reposed  those  of  his  mistress  Isotta,  whose  initials 
interwoven  with  his  own  were  carved  on  every  pillar  and 
boss  ;  while  without  in  another  sarcophagus  are  deposited  the 
bones  of  Gemisthus  Pletho,  which  he  had  proudly  brought 
from  Greece  in  days  when  men  had  been  taught  to  seek 
miraculous  virtue  in  the  most  gruesome  relics  of  mortality. 
In  this  church,  with  a  hideous  moral  heathenism  looking  out 
from  every  figure  and  line,  what  was  conceived  to  be  an  act 
of  Christian  worship  was  going  on.  A  crowd  of  priests  was 
marching  round,  one  at  their  head  carrying  a  cross  on  which  was 
fastened  a  contorted  figure,  together  with  nails,  a  hammer,  a 
saw,  and  a  pair  of  pincers,  while  from  one  of  the  beams  hung 
a  ladder  of  ropes.  As  the  crowd  paused  to  chant  their 
monotonous  strain  before  each  altar,  bending  themselves  and 
their  symbol  towards  it  together,  I  could  not  help  saying, 
in  what  was  not  pride  but  utter  humiliation  of  soul,  "  Your 
worship  is  not  mine,  nor  is  your  God  ;  and  as  for  this  cross 
you  carry,  it  speaks  rather  of  the  wickedness  of  the  men  who 
slew  the  Saviour  than  of  the  grace  of  Him  who  saves  man 
by  His  love."  For  how  is  it  possible  to  make  an  image  of 
Him  without  carnalizing  a  form  that  must  be  spiritual  to 


557 

be  true  ?  He  is  a  type,  an  ideal,  a  symbol,  which  expresses 
at  once  the  grace  of  the  infinite  God,  and  the  promise,  the 
potency  and  the  inexhaustible  possibilities  of  man.  In  His 
face  divine  pity  shows,  the  tenderness  of  the  everlasting 
Father  as  He  looks  out  from  an  eternity  that  knows  neither 
the  haste  nor  the  passion  of  time  ;  and  yet  while  the  pity  is 
divine  the  face  is  human,  and  speaks  of  man  made  by  God 
for  God,  touched  with  the  shame  for  sin  which  the  pure 
alone  can  know,  the  sorrow  for  misery  which  none  but  the 
blessed  can  feel,  the  horror  for  death  which  only  the 
dweller  in  immortal  light  can  experience.  And  this  is  the 
person,  "  all  glorious  within,"  who  has  emancipated  religion 
from  the  tyranny  of  place  by  teaching  us  that  "he  who 
hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the  Father." 

§   II.      The  Institution  as  it  Affects    Worship 

I.  The  institution  is  the  second  and  most  potent  of  the 
forms  under  which  the  tribal  spirit  may  affect  religion. 
The  term  denotes  all  the  customs  and  usages  which  con- 
stitute the  local  worship,  or  which  determine  the  times  and 
regulate  the  conduct  of  its  several  parts.  Now  the  insti- 
tution, so  understood,  is  more  potent  in  its  action  than  the 
place  ;  for  it  speaks  more  directly  and  authoritatively  of  God 
and  to  Him,  describes  His  character  and  attitude  to  man, 
as  well  as  what  man's  character,  and  what  his  attitude  to- 
wards God  ought  to  be  ;  what  he  must  do  and  what  agents 
and  agencies  employ  if  he  would  please  Him.  In  the  wor- 
ship therefore,  as  a  consuetudinary  or  regulated  system,  the 
idea  of  God  is  presented  in  its  most  definite,  concentrated 
and  constant  form  ;  the  worshipper  learns,  by  doing  the 
tilings  which  authority  has  declared  and  usage  sanctioned 
as  the  most  agreeable  to  Deity,  what  the  Deity  is  and  what 
kind  and  order  of  man  He  most  approves. 

While  the  ideas  that  underlie  religion  and  organize  its  in- 


558  THE  MORE  CEREMONIAL  WORSHIP  GROWS 

stitutions  differ,  qualitatively  and  formally,  almost  to  infinity, 
yet  in  one  respect  all  worships  agree,  they  are  methods  of 
approaching  and  pleasing  God,  means  by  which  man  seeks 
access  to  Him,  tries  to  win  His  favour  and  gain  His  peace. 
Of  course  in  the  very  way  taken  to  reach  Him,  and  the 
acts  done,  and  the  things  offered  in  His  honour,  there  is  a 
most  subtle  yet  concrete  indication  of  character ;  but  differ- 
ence here  does  not  affect  the  point  of  agreement :  all  worship 
aims  at  establishing  harmony  between  two  wills,  God's  and 
man's  ;  whether  it  be  by  influencing  man  to  surrender  his 
will  to  God's,  or  by  inducing  God  to  do  the  will  of  man.  These 
two  may  indeed  imperceptibly  shade  into  one  another,  but 
the  rule  is  this — the  lower  the  idea  of  God,  the  more  He  is 
conceived  to  be  in  the  hands  of  man,  but  the  higher  the  idea 
of  Him  the  stronger  becomes  man's  desire  to  leave  himself  in 
the  hands  of  God. 

2.  If  now  the  function  of  worship  and  its  relation  to  the 
ideas  of  God  and  religion  have  been  correctly  described,  it 
follows  that  this  is  the  point  where  religion  affects  man  and 
man  religion  most  potently  and  most  constantly.  What  its 
effect  on  character  is  to  be  does  not  depend  so  much  on  the 
idea  of  the  relation  between  the  persons  as  on  the  idea  of  the 
persons  related.  In  the  abstract  worship  ought  to  be  the 
moment  of  most  penetrative  and  illuminative  exaltation  in 
man's  life,  and  it  will  be  this  if  God  is  the  highest  and  the 
holiest  Being  he  can  conceive  or  desire  ;  but  this  it  will  not 
be  if  he  simply  seeks  from  God  some  advantage  to  himself 
which  he  can  obtain  from  no  other  person  or  will.  The 
advantage  need  not  be  material,  may  indeed  be  forgiveness 
of  sins  or  acceptance  of  the  person  ;  but  the  mischief  will 
be  radical  if  the  attempt  be  made  to  purchase  it  by  offering 
to  God  something  that  will  please  Him  in  order  that  He 
may  do  something  that  will  benefit  us.  For  a  God  from 
whom  anything  can  be  purchased  has  fallen  from  the  high 
estate  of  deity,  who  must  give  out  of  free  grace  if  He  is  to 


THE    LESS    MORAL    RELIGION    BECOMES  559 

be  honoured.  If  worship  be  conceived  not  as  adoration 
of  the  only  and  absolutely  adorable,  but  as  giving  a  quid 
pro  quo,  then  it  becomes  an  effectual  means  of  deteriorating 
religion  and  depraving  man,  and  assimilating  God  to  what 
in  him  is  most  depraved.  And  the  more  the  externals  of 
worship — the  acts  it  consists  of,  the  offerings  it  brings,  the 
persons  who  present  them — are  emphasized,  the  more  it  bears 
this  character  and  does  this  work.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
ancient  religion  whose  worship  was  most  domestic  and  least 
official,  was  the  most  lucid,  imperative  and  impressive  in  its 
ethical  teaching  ;  while  those  religions  that  made  most  of 
priesthood  and  sacrifice  were  also  those  that  most  neglected 
the  humaner  and  higher  virtues.  The  highest  ethics  of  the 
Rigveda  are  associated  with  the  name  of  Varuna,  and  in  his 
days  the  rishi  or  poet  potently  sang  his  praise,  and  the  priest 
was  only  a  shadow  and  a  name  ;  but  in  the  later  Sanskrit 
literature,  as,  say,  in  the  epic  which  celebrates  the  deeds  of 
Rama  and  the  Law  Book  which  bears  the  name  of  Manu,  the 
tendency  that  began  with  magnifying  sacrifice  has  ended  in 
the  decay  of  ethics,  the  death  of  all  ideas  of  duty  towards 
man  as  man,  and  the  apotheosis  of  caste.  Greek  philosophy 
was  a  noble  teacher  of  morals,  but  what  ideals  of  good  or 
justice  do  we  owe  to  Greek  religion  ?  The  Roman  State 
jealously  guarded  the  dignity  and  sacred  character  of  the 
priesthood,  and  proudly  supplied  the  college  of  pontiffs  with 
"  robes  of  purple  and  chariots  of  state,"  but  had  it  not  been 
for  the  Stoic  teaching,  especially  as  it  affected  Roman  law, 
and  the  deification  of  the  Empire,  what  would  have  become 
of  Roman  virtue?  In  Israel  the  conflict  of  prophet  and 
priest  reached  its  acutest  issue  in  the  idea  of  worship.  What 
the  one  cultivated  and  delighted  in,  "  the  multitude  of  sacri- 
fices," "  the  burnt  offerings  of  rams  and  the  fat  of  fed  beasts," 
"the  blood  of  bullocks  or  of  lambs  or  of  he-goats,"1  the 
other  despised  and  abhorred.  The  sacrifices  the  prophet 

1   Isaiah  i    11. 


560      CHRIST    IS    THE   ONLY  INSTITUTION 

praised  were  those  of  joy  and  righteousness,  of  a  broken  and 
a  contrite  spirit.  The  notion  that  God  was  the  Being  whose 
mind  needed  to  be  changed,  and  that  the  change  could  be 
effected  by  things  that  could  be  purchased,  a  proper  animal 
properly  selected  and  properly  killed,  burned  and  offered 
by  proper  hands  in  the  proper  place,  was  a  notion  fatal  to 
the  ethical  nature  of  religion  and  its  power  to  create  moral 
men.  The  more  religion  is  bound  to  a  special  class  of  per- 
sons who  officiate  at  special  times  and  seasons,  the  more  these 
persons  become  distinguished  not  by  character  but  by  de- 
scent, not  by  spiritual  purity  but  by  ceremonial  cleanness, 
not  by  moral  eminence  but  by  distinctions  of  office  and 
habit.  And  these  things  do  not  make  for  a  high  or  a  uni- 
versal ideal  in  religion  ;  on  the  contrary,  without  their  aboli- 
tion one  could  not  be  realized.  The  only  institution  possible 
in  a  universal  religion  must  be  an  ideal ;  and  Christ  is  at  once 
an  historical  and  a  symbolical  person.  As  the  one  He  shows 
what  the  worshipper  ought  to  be,  as  the  other  He  is  the  cause 
of  acceptable  worship. 

§111.     Christ  the  only  Institution  for  Christian  Worship 

I.  Now  it  is  here  where  the  discussions  as  to  Christ's  death 
and  as  to  the  emphasis  laid  upon  it  by  Himself  and  His 
apostles  will  be  understood.  It  was  said  that  His  person 
was  conceived  as  an  institution  ;  and  this  signified  that  all 
the  conditions  and  means  needed  by  man  for  the  perfect 
worship  of  God  were  realized  in  Him.  He  fulfilled  the  law  ; 
the  ideas  which  the  Levitical  system  showed  in  shadow  He 
made  substantive  and  final,  realized  "  once  and  for  ever."  He 
was  "  the  great  High  Priest,"  and  in  His  priesthood  He  was 
alone.  No  one  stood  or  could  stand  by  His  side.  He  was  the 
sole  Sacrifice  needed  by  man  or  required  by  God,  and  offered 
through  the  Eternal  Spirit.  He  lived  for  ever  and  His  sacrifice 
for  ever  availed,  for  the  temple  where  His  priesthood  was 


FOR   CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP  561 

exercised  was  eternal  in  the  heavens.  And  He  fulfilled  the 
prophetic  as'  well  as  the  Levitical  ideal.  He  was  "  the  Lord 
our  righteousness,"  the  cause  and  means  of  man's  acceptance 
with  God,  achieving  the  forgiveness  of  sins  and  the  life  ever- 
lasting. He  was  thus  a  whole  institution  of  worship  ;  in 
Him  God  was  reconciled,  in  Him  man  was  accepted,  and  He 
with  the  right  arm  of  His  Divinity  round  man,  and  the  left 
arm  of  His  humanity  round  God  held  the  two  together,  know- 
ing and  known. 

2.  From  this  position  several  consequences  follow. 

i.  Christ  is  the  sole  institution  for  worship  which  has 
divine  authority  in  the  Christian  religion.  He  is  the  only 
Mediator,  and  no  intermediation  is  provided  for,  though  means 
to  introduce  man  to  the  knowledge  of  His  functions  may  be 
lawful  and  expedient.  Hence  His  office  does  not  exclude 
such  minor  or  ancillary  help  as  the  weakness  of  man,  his 
peculiar  temper  or  stage  of  culture,  may  demand.  These  may 
be  necessary  to  him  while  not  essential  to  the  religion,  but 
they  are  permissible  only  as  aids  to  the  apprehension  of 
the  truth.  The  cardinal  fact  is  the  sole  sufficiency  of  Christ  ; 
the  man  that  comes  unto  God  must  come  through  Him,  and 
through  no  other. 

ii.  The  Eucharist  is  not  in  the  strict  sense  an  institution  for 
worship,  but  a  condition  of  higher  fellowship,  a  means  of 
communion.  Through  it  the  man  speaks  in  symbol  to  his 
"great  High  Priest"  and  the  Priest  speaks  to  him  ;  but  this  is 
not  to  worship  God,  though  it  mav  be  to  be  better  qualified 
for  His  worship.  The  reference  is  to  the  sacrifice,  to  our 
participation  in  it,  to  our  dying  in  Christ  in  order  that  He 
and  we  may  live  together  ;  but  what  this  signifies  is  that  the 
more  \ve  become  in  the  sight  of  God  and  in  our  own  ex- 
perience one  with  Him,  the  fitter  we  are  to  worship  God. 
The  man  who  can  most  perfectly  praise  and  serve  God  is 
he  who  can  most  truly  say  :  "  It  is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but 
Christ  that  liveth  in  me." 

I'.C.K.  ^6 


562      THE    EUCHARIST   AND   THE   WORD 

iii.  What  is  true  of  the  Eucharist  is  also  true  of  preaching, 
though  it  has  a  larger  function  and  a  more  clearly  recog- 
nized place  in  the  chain  of  secondary  causes.  It  has  more 
of  the  essence  or  soul  of  worship  in  it ;  for  it  creates  the  en- 
lightened intellect  and  the  quick  conscience,  without  which 
there  can  be  no  worship  of  a  moral  Deity.  Jesus  Himself 
was  a  preacher,  formed  preachers,  and  commanded  them  to 
do  as  He  had  done.  The  apostles  were  preachers,  and  while 
there  is  in  all  the  apostolical  writings  but  one  explicit 
reference  to  the  Eucharist,  the  Word  is  everywhere  ;  to  preach 
it  was  what  they  lived  for,  and  the  means  by  which  the 
Churches  lived.  And  this  signifies  that  Christ  appealed  to 
faith  ;  and  the  Christian  lived  by  faith,  and  faith  is  know- 
ledge, and  knowledge  is  the  exercised  reason.  He  had 
nothing  to  fear,  nay,  He  had  everything  to  gain  from  the 
awakened  intelligence.  The  slothful  and  the  sensuous  mind  is 
His  last  enemy,  which  the  preaching  of  the  cross  was  meant 
to  destroy.  In  the  apostolic  age  this  preaching  was  a 
"  stumbling-block "  to  the  Jew  and  "  foolishness "  to  the 
Greek  ;  but  unto  the  called,  whether  Jews  or  Greeks,  it  was 
"  Christ  the  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of  God."  What 
antiquity  could  have  easily  understood  was  a  religion  made 
up  of  offices,  customs,  and  usages ;  what  it  could  not  under- 
stand was  a  religion  whose  only  institution  was  a  person 
realized  by  faith. 

iv.  In  forming  and  founding  this  institution  for  worship 
the  initiative  was  God's  and  not  man's.  It  contradicted  the 
belief  that  had  governed  man's  action  towards  Deity  and 
determined  the  acts  and  forms  of  his  worship,  viz.  that 
God's  mind  needed  to  be  changed  and  could  be  changed  by 
gifts  and  sacrifices.  The  belief  is  venerable, — if  age  could 
authenticate  any  opinion  this  were  the  truest  man  has  ever 
held  ;  and  it  is  common, — if  to  be  believed  everywhere,  always, 
and  by  all  make  a  belief  true,  this  one  could  not  possibly 
be  false.  And  it  is  of  all  the  beliefs  known  to  religion 


WORSHIP   DOES    NOT   RECONCILE   GOD    563 

the  most  pernicious  ;  out  of  it  has  come  the  notion 
that  God  was  harsher  than  man,  that  He  loved  blood 
and  could  be  appeased  by  it  ;  that  man  by  satisfying 
His  lust  of  death  could  buy  from  Him  pardon  and  good  will. 
The  notion  has  been  incorporated  in  multitudes  of  cults,  hab 
been  coarsened  and  refined  as  it  has  dominated  man  or  been 
subdued  by  him  ;  but  it  has  held  its  ground  in  the  religions, 
most  of  all  in  those  whose  elaborate  institutions,  sacrificial 
and  ceremonial,  have  been  the  proudest  work  of  its  hands. 
But  the  Christian  idea  reversed  and  undid  all  this.  God  it 
conceived  as  by  nature  merciful,  immutably  gracious  in 
will,  while  man  was  the  being  who  needed  to  be  changed. 
Hence  its  very  essence  was  stated  to  be  "  a  ministry  of  recon- 
ciliation," and  this  was  explained  as  "  God  in  Christ  reconciling 
the  world  unto  Himself,"  1  or  as  "  God  commending  His  love 
toward  us,  in  that,  while  we  were  yet  sinners,  Christ  died  for 
us." "  The  new  institution  for  worship  thus  made  God  a  real 
God  for  mankind.  It  may  be  that  the  old  belief  is  not  dead 
yet,  that  it  still  survives  even  in  Christian  societies,  but  it  lives 
as  the  old  Adam  lives  in  the  new  man,  the  survivor  from 
a  more  ancient  world,  out  of  harmony  with  its  living  en- 
vironment. 

v.  The  institution  defines  the  kind  and  quality  of  the 
\vorshipper.  He  is  to  have  the  mind  of  Christ,  to  be  an 
imitator  of  Him.  While  the  worship  is  made  possible  by  His 
death,  His  life  shows  what  makes  the  worshipper  acceptable. 
Here  the  value  of  His  sinlessness  appears  :  He  is  the  ideal 
Man,  and  the  Christian  is  to  be  in  his  own  age  what  Jesus 
was  in  His.  The  New  Covenant  was  created  by  a  moral 
Person  for  the  creation  of  moral  persons.  If  the  sacrifice 
shows  how  much  God  did  for  man,  the  life  shows  how  much 
He  expects  from  man.  He  saves  the  sinner  that  lie  may 
form  him  into  a  saint. 

vi.  The  function  of  the  worship  is  to  qualify  man  to 
1  2  Cor.  v.  18-19.  *  Rom.  v.  8. 


564     WORST    HERESY   AS    TO   THE    PERSON 

fulfil  the  divine  purpose.  It  has  an  ultimate  and  a  proximate 
end  ;  the  ultimate  end  is  the  glory  of  God,  the  proximate  is  to 
form  the  good  man,  but  this  is  conceived  as  the  way  to  that. 
In  worship  the  man  adores  God,  and  he  can  adore  only  as  he 
knows  and  admires;  and  God  penetrates  the  man,  becomes 
the  energy  of  his  will,  or  the  soul  of  his  soul,  the  heart  of  his 
heart,  until  it  can  be  said  :  "  Lo !  God  is  in  the  man,  and  is 
using  him  to  achieve  the  salvation  of  the  world." 

§  IV.     Conclusion 

I.  Here  then  our  long  and  not  untoilsome  journey  ends, 
though  I  feel  as  if  these  later  discussions  raised  problems  too 
imperious  to  be  dismissed  unresolved.  Yet  our  conclusion 
must  be  of  the  most  practical  kind  : — if  we  do  well  to  speak 
of  the  history  of  Jesus  and  the  interpretation  of  Christ  as  the 
programme  of  a  religion,  are  we  not  bound  to  compare  the 
performance  with  the  programme  ?  The  result  may  be  humili- 
ation, for  so  much  of  the  programme  remains  unfulfilled  ;  but 
also  some  instruction  and  enlightenment.  The  aggregation 
of  the  institutions  and  usages  which  we  co-ordinate  under  the 
term  "  Church  "  round  the  central  idea  of  the  Christian  faith, 
may  have  been  inevitable ;  but  it  does  not  follow  that  the  in- 
evitable was  the  good,  not  to  say  the  best.  The  Church  which 
survived  the  Roman  Empire  was  an  assemblage  of  new  ideas 
and  of  ancient  customs  that  had  proved  their  suitability  to 
human  nature  by  living  in  many  religions  and  surviving  many 
changes  of  culture  and  belief;  and  though  it  may  have  helped 
to  preserve  the  Christian  religion,  yet  it  was  at  the  expense 
of  its  higher  ethical  and  finer  spiritual  qualities.  The  religion 
was  saved  by  being  assimilated  to  the  world  in  which  it 
had  come  to  live  ;  but  the  assimilation  has  cost  it  centuries 
of  impotence,  of  bitter  controversies,  and  of  struggles,  more 
or  less  fruitless,  to  escape  from  the  toils  in  which  it  had  been 
caught.  Even  if  Nicaea  affirmed  the  truth  as  to  the  deity  of 


565 

the  Son,  it  so  did  it  as  to  help  to  form  the  Church  into  a  civil 
state  within  the  Empire  and  under  the  Emperor.  Granted 
that  Chalcedon  rightly  defined  the  two  natures  and  joined 
them,  properly  distinguished  and  delimited,  in  the  unity  of 
the  person,  yet  it  conspicuously  forgot  alike  in  theory  and 
in  practice  their  ethical  significance  as  to  God  and  man. 
Would  it  not  have  been  to  the  infinite  advantage  of  the 
religion  if  these  Councils  had  concerned  themselves  as  much 
with  the  ethics  as  with  the  metaphysics  of  the  person  of 
Christ ;  and  demanded  that  the  Church  should  realize  the 
fraternity,  the  unity  of  classes  and  peoples,  the  faith,  hope 
and  charity,  the  obedience  towards  God  and  duty  towards 
man  it  symbolized  ?  Even  if  we  concede — though  the  con- 
cession, to  be  just,  would  need  to  be  largely  qualified — that 
Augustine  was  right  and  the  Pelagians  were  wrong,  must  we 
not  also  maintain  that  his  jealousy  for  the  pre-eminence  of 
Adam  and  for  the  organic  being  of  man  in  sin,  made  him 
miss  the  most  splendid  opportunity  that  ever  came  to  any 
Father  or  thinker  for  so  applying  the  sovereignty  of  Christ 
to  the  higher  moral,  social,  and  spiritual  life  of  the  race  as 
to  show  how  the  Christian  idea  could  fulfil  the  ideal  of 
humanity?  Luther  preached  justification  by  faith  alone, 
but  he  failed  to  see  that  equality  before  God  was  incomplete 
so  long  as  the  Church  showed  respect  of  persons,  bowing  low 
before  kings,  but  trampling  as  with  iron  feet  upon  the 
peasants  they  oppressed.  There  is  indeed  in  all  history 
nothing  more  tragic  than  the  fact  that  our  heresies  have 
been  more  speculative  than  ethical,  more  concerned  with 
opinion  than  with  conduct  ;  that  the  Church  whose  claims 
are  highest  and  most  indefeasible  in  doctrine,  has  been  the 
most  prone  to  compromise  in  morals,  consumed  with  jealousy 
for  the  honour  and  inalienability  of  the  priestly  office,  while 
cynically  indulgent  towards  the  priestly  character.  Hut  if 
Christ  be  rightly  interpreted,  the  worst  sins  against  God  are 
those  most  injurious  to  man.  His  person  is  indeed  a  symbol 


of  humanity  in  its  double  sense,  as,  subjectively,  an  emotion 
which  becomes  enthusiasm  for  the  common  good,  and  as, 
objectively,  a  race  made  one  by  the  possession  of  a  common 
and  equal  nature.  Defined  and  explicated  on  its  Godward 
side,  the  person  yields  a  doctrine  of  God  and  redemption  ; 
but  on  its  Manward  side,  it  becomes  a  theory  of  the  race 
which  it  is  the  primary  duty  and  main  function  of  the  Church 
to  realize.  The  ancient  usages — the  priesthoods,  the  sacri- 
fices, the  consecrations  and  transubstantiations,  beliefs  regu- 
lated by  canon  and  discipline,  enforced  by  law,  as  if  it  were 
an  affair  of  state — which  out  of  the  old  religions  had  stolen 
back  into  the  Church,  signified  that  the  institutions  the  person 
had  replaced  were  seeking  to  displace  the  person.  They  had 
on  their  side  the  innate  and  inveterate  prejudices  of  human 
nature  ;  it  had  on  its  side  the  ideal  which  was  the  supreme 
dream  of  the  religion,  and  it  has  proved  its  power  by  com- 
pelling its  very  enemies  to  do  its  will,  even  when  seeking  their 
own  ends. 

2.  The  person,  then,  as  institution  made  the  religion 
universal  in  its  aims  and  ideas,  in  its  modes  and  action,  and 
it  has  acted,  in  spite  of  the  defective  means  and  recalcitrant 
agencies  it  has  had  to  employ,  as  became  its  high  function. 
And  what  inference  as  to  its  constituents  and  character 
may  be  drawn  from  these  discussions  ?  Our  purpose  was  not 
simply  to  co-ordinate  historical  phenomena,  but  to  discover 
the  causes  that  produce  them,  the  ends  they  serve,  the  laws 
that  govern  their  order  and  their  movements.  And  certainly 
no  discovery  has  in  it  more  promise  of  scientific  satisfaction 
than  the  relation  between  the  conception  of  Christ  which 
makes  His  person  the  source  and  epitome  of  a  religion,  and 
the  function  He  has  actually  fulfilled  in  history.  For  what 
is  the  principle  fundamental  to  all  science?  This  :  we  do  not 
live  in  a  world  where  things  come  uncaused.  We  conceive 
nature  as  the  realm  where  order  and  causation  reign. 
Chance  is  a  word  science  does  not  know.  Accident  is  a 


WITH    THE    PERFORMANCE    IN    HISTORY    567 

term  which  only  denotes  ignorance.  It  is  used  because 
vision  has  not  found  the  secret  it  searched  for.  The  growth 
of  science  is  the  decay  of  chance  ;  when  the  one  has  finally 
prevailed  there  will  be  no  place  for  the  other.  But  order 
cannot  reign  in  the  nature  now  around  man,  and  yet  chance 
govern  man  himself;  and  if  order  reigns  in  history  as  in 
nature,  then  the  great  persons,  who  are  in  history  what 
forces  are  in  nature,  must  belong  to  this  order,  for  they  are 
the  very  factors  by  which  it  is  constituted.  But  if  we  hold 
this  most  scientific  principle,  we  must  mark  the  inevitable 
question  : — Can  Christ  stand  where  He  does  uncaused,  un- 
ordered ?  If  He  had  not  been  what  He  was,  and  stood 
where  He  did,  could  anything  in  history  be  as  it  has  been 
or  as  it  is  ?  Is  there  any  person  necessary  in  the  same  sense 
as  He  is  to  the  higher  history  of  Man  ?  May  we  not  speak 
of  Him  as  the  keystone  of  the  arch  which  spans  the  gulf  of 
time?  But  can  we  conceive  that  the  keystone  came  there 
by  accident  ?  or  otherwise  than  by  the  hand  which  built  the 
bridge,  which  opened  the  chasm  and  determined  the  course 
of  the  river  that  flows  beneath  ?  And  can  the  nature  or 
character  of  this  Cause  be  known  ?  Causes  are  known  in 
their  effects,  for  cause  and  effect  ever  correspond  in  quality 
and  character.  This  Christ,  then,  as  He  stands  in  universal 
history,  accomplishing  those  marvels  of  the  Spirit  which  we 
have  seen  indissolubly  associated  with  His  person  and  His 
name,  is  an  effect ;  and  as  He  is  the  Cause  of  Him  must  be. 
Nay,  more,  is  not  the  effect  only  as  it  were  the  cause  embo- 
died, the  old  force,  unspent,  persisting  in  a  new  form?  And 
how  shall  we  express  the  idea  in  this  case  better  than  in  the 
2vangelical  formula,  "  the  Word  became  flesh,  and  dwelt 
among  us  "?  and  how  better  describe  His  continuous  action 
through  all  the  centuries  of  our  Christian  experience  than  by 
the  verse,  "We  beheld  11  is  glory,  a  glory  as  of  the  only 
Begotten  from  the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth"?  The 
grandeur  which  thus  comes  to  His  person  transfigures 


568       THE    RELIGION    IS    GOD    IN   CHRIST 

through  it  all  nature  and  the  whole  history  of  man,  and  may 
well  bid  us  adopt  as  our  own  the  words  which  sum  up  the 
faith  of  an  apostle,  "  God  has  been  in  Christ  reconciling  the 
world  unto  Himself." 


True  Religion  is  no  piece  of  artifice  ;  it  is  no  boiling  up  of  our  Ima- 
ginative powers  nor  the  glowing  heats  of  Passion  ;  though  these  are 
too  often  mistaken  for  it,  when  in  our  jugglings  in  Religion  we  cast  a 
mist  before  our  own  eyes  :  But  it  is  a  new  Nature  informing  the  Souls  of 
men  ;  it  is  a  God- like  frame  of  Spirit,  discovering  it  self  most  of  all  in 
Serene  and  Clear  minds,  in  deep  Humility,  Meekness,  Self-denial,  Uni- 
versal Love  of  God  and  all  true  Goodness,  without  Partiality  and  without 
Hypocrisie  ;  whereby  we  are  taught  to  know  God,  and  knowing  him  to 
love  him,  and  conform  our  selves  as  much  as  may  be  to  all  that  Perfec- 
tion which  shines  forth  in  him. 

The  Glory  of  the  Deity  and  Salvation  of  men  are  not  allaied\>y  their 
union  one  with  another,  but  both  exalted  together  in  the  most  tran- 
scendent way,  for  Divine  love  and  bounty  are  the  supreme  rulers  in 
Heaven  and  Earth.  <b66vos  e£o>  deiov  x°P°v  «raTai.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  sowre  Despight  and  Envy  lodged  in  the  bosome  of  that  ever 
blessed  Being  above,  whose  name  is  LOVE,  and  all  whose  Dispensations 
to  the  Sons  of  men  are  but  the  dispreadings  and  distended  radiations  of 
his  Love,  as  freely  flowing  forth  from  it  through  the  whole  orbe  and 
sphear  of  its  creation  as  the  bright  light  from  the  Sun  in  the  firmament, 
of  whose  benign  influences  we  are  then  only  deprived  when  we  hide  and 
withdraw  our  selves  from  them. — JOHN  SMITH  THE  PLATONIST. 


INDEX 


Abraham,  248,  279  ;  vision  of 
(in  the  Koran),  280 

Abu  Bekr,  286 

Acquired  characters,  trans- 
mission of,  72 

Acts,  Book  of,  297,  442 

Adam,  47  ;  and  Christ,  101,  301, 
445  ;  and  Eden,  204 

Aeschylus,  198 

Agnosticism,  religious  instinct  in, 
197 

Alexander  the  Great,  407,  552 

Alexandria,  school  of,   254,  447 

Ambrose,  428 

Anarchy,  a  form  of  pessimism, 
116 

Anaxagoras,  246 

Anthropology,     187,     192,     195, 

2O4,   212 

Antony  of  Padua,  St.,  555 
Ape,    The,  history    of,  42  ;    and 

man,  difference  of,  45 
Apocalypse,   date  of,   297  ;  idea 

of   Christ   in,   450,   475  ;     His 

death    in,    501  ;     idea   of   the 

Church  in,  531 

Apostles,   and    the   Temple,   489 
Apotheosis  in  Apostolic  thought, 

474 

Aquinas,  analytic  power  of,  13 
Aristotle,  246,  387,  460 
Art  and  religion,  198 


Aryans,  religion  of  ,  217,  223,  230 

Asceticism,  mediaeval,  114;  of 
Schopenhauer,  125  ;  of  Bud- 
dha, 179,  274,  529;  of  the 
Essenes,  530 

Asoka,  281 

Assyria,  religion  of,  191,  193, 
220  ;  empire  of,  231 

Athanasius,  on  the  Incarnation, 
19  ;  on  Antony,  337 

Athens,  slavery  in,  545 

Atonement  (see  Christ,  Death  of) 

Augustine,  13,  19  ;  on  evil,  100  ; 
on  sin  and  grace,  101  ;  theo- 
logy of,  179  ;  De  Civitate  Dei, 
299  ;  on  miracles,  337 

Ayodha,  holy  land  of  Buddhism, 
553 


B 


Babylonia,  religion  of,  220  ;  em- 
pire of,  231 

Bain,  Professor,  on  matter  and 
mind,  52 

Baur,  403,  427,  442 

Benares,  552 

Benedict,  263 

Bentham,  his  theory  of  morals, 

65 

Beyschlag,  on  Xvrpov,  404 
Bhak  Li,  549 
Bhagavadgita,  382,  545 
Boehme,   241 


569 


570 


INDEX 


Bolingbroke,  Deism  of,  106 

Book  of  the  Dead,  239 

Brahma,  118,  219,  240,  541 

Brahmanism,  232,  242  ;  com- 
pared with  Buddhism,  273  ; 
and  Mohammedanism,  277 
(see  also  India,  religion  of) 

Browning,  quoted,  430 

Bruno,  Giordano,  103 

Buddha,  his  environment,  118, 
271  ;  his  agreement  with 
Fichte,  123  ;  and  Schopen- 
hauer, 125 ;  personal  quali- 
ties of,  126;  story  of,  272; 
and  Brahmanism,  273  ;  his 
Church,  273 ;  his  individu- 
ality, 275  ;  humanity  of,  276  ; 
myths  concerning,  335,  472  ; 
his  social  ideal  compared  with 
the  Greek,  369  ;  and  Christ's, 
483,  529  f. 

Buddhism,  7,  193,  262,  270  ff.  ; 
its  philosophy,  118,  230  ;  idea 
of  merit  and  demerit  in,  1 20 ; 
a  positive  religion,  532  ;  a  mis- 
sionary religion,  233  ;  not  an 
atheism,  242  ;  its  moral  order 
theistic,  243  ;  compared  with 
Brahmanism  and  Moham- 
medanism, 277 

Bunsen  quoted,  229 

Buridan's  Ass,  77 

Butler,  on  morals,  84  sqq.  ;  his 
Sermons  and  Analogy,  85  ; 
on  the  difficulties  of  faith, 
109  ;  on  moral  evil,  150  ;  com- 
pared with  Kant,  84 

Byron's  pessimism,  115 


Caesar,  407 

Caiaphas,  characterized,  314  j 
his  statesmanship,  316;  his 
view  of  Jesus,  314  sqq. 


Caligula,  344 

Calvin,    theology     of,    179  ;     on 

the  Agony,  428 
Caste  in  India,  232 
Categorical  imperative  of  Kant, 

87, 123 

Categories  of  experience  sup- 
plied by  personality,  35 

Causation,  Hume  on,  25  ;  in  a 
pure  naturalism,  28  ;  in  na- 
ture and  in  personality,  30 ; 
in  nature  a  deduction  from 
will  in  man,  34 

Celsus,  427 

Chalcedon,  Creed  of,  3 

Character,    natural    factors    of, 

311 
China,  religion  of,  192,  193,  266 

Chinese  idea  of  man,  546 
Christ,  the  person  of,  a  problem 
for  the  reason,  5  ;  not  a 
made  mystery,  7  ;  dialectic 
examination  of,  8  ;  literary 
and  historical  examination 
of,  10 ;  defects  of  these 
methods,  13  ;  idea  of,  16,  18  ; 
absolute  need  of,  17  ;  incom- 
patibility of,  with  pure  natural- 
ism, 23  ;  the  historical  and 
the  ideal  in,  477  ;  epitomizes 
the  mystery  of  Being,  478  ; 
contrasted  with  Buddha  and 
Mohammed,  530  ;  the  uni- 
versal man,  550;  the  keystone 
of  the  arch  of  history,  565  ; 
His  names,  324-26,  438,  446, 
449,  450,  456,  457  ;  Logos, 
the,  326,  452,  455  ;  Son  of 
God,  446,  449,  543  ;  Son  of 
man,  n,  397,  406,  475  ; 
Messiah,  398,  400,  412  ;  "  the 
suffering  servant  of  God," 
398,  400,  501  ;  Lamb  of  God, 
457,  469,  501  ;  idea  of  as 
generative  of  the  apostolic 


INDEX 


571 


literature,  459  ;  in  Paul,  445  ; 
in  Hebrews,  447  ;  in  the 
Apocalypse,  450  ;  in  John, 
451,  502  ;  mythical  theory  as 
to  the  person  stated  and 
criticized,  467  ;  the  idea  not 
invented  by  Paul,  460  ;  affini- 
ties in  Greek  religion,  473  ; 
its  historic  source,  the  mind 
of  Christ,  474  ;  His  teaching 
concerning  His  death,  395  ; 
the  teaching  offends  the 
disciples,  400  ;  as  a  ransom, 
404  ;  as  voluntary,  408  ;  as  a 
vicarious  sacrifice,  499  ;  its 
ends,  410  ;  idea  of,  in  Paul, 
492,  504  ff.  ;  in  the  He- 
brews, 494,  500  ;  in  i  Peter, 
501  ;  in  the  Apocalypse, 
501  ;  how  Christ  creates  the 
Christian  religion,  295,  305, 
476  ;  makes  its  ideas,  443- 
453,  460  ff.,  541  ff. ;  becomes 
its  only  institution,  481,  514, 
557;  emancipates  religion 
from  the  tribal  Spirit,  555 
(see  also  Epistles,  Gospels) 
Christianity,  seems  occidental 
to  the  Orient,  234  ;  and 
Hebraism,  261  ;  problem  of, 
295)  3°5  ',  n°t  a  syncretism, 
518  ;  creates  a  people,  521  ; 
not  a  positive  religion,  533 
Cicero,  360 
Civil  Law  (see  Law) 
Civilization,  177,  188 
Clifford,  The  late  Professor,  52 
Coleridge  on  motives,  76 
Colour  not  in  nature,  31 
C  nnte,  empiricism  of,  50  ;  his 
great  Being,  197  ;  on  mono- 
t hrism,  5^8 

Confucian  classics,   382 
Confucius,    266,    369,   482 
Conscience,     Bentham    on,    67  ; 


Butler  on,  85  ;    origin  of,  81  ; 

and  the  judgment  of   society, 

82 

Consciousness  (see  Self) 
Consensus  gentium,  381 
Conservation   of   energy,    52 
Constantine,  281 
Corinth,  church  of,  529 
Councils,  ecclesiastical,     19  (see 

also   Chalcedon,   Nica^a) 
Covenants,  422 
Creation     continuous,    59,    106, 

171,  183,  293 
Creeds,  19 
Criticism,  and    Christianity,    10, 

296 
Cross,    the     (see    Jesus    Christ, 

Death  of) 
Cynicism,  Greek,    characterized, 

H3 
Cyrus,  348 


Daniel,  Book  of,  its  influence  on 
Jesus,  ii 

Dante,   198,  510 

Darwin,  his  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution, 39  ;  his  petitio  prin- 
cipii,  47  ;  on  orchids,  54  ; 
his  ethical  theory,  70 

David,  367,  488 

Death,  the  human  tragedy,  142  ; 
what  life  gains  through,  144 

Deism,  and  the  problem  of  evil, 
103  ;  of  Bolingbroke,  106  ; 
its  shallowness,  108  ;  its  idea 
of  a  state  of  probation,  166 

Delphi,  552 

Democritus,   53 

Dhammapada,  582 

Disciples,  their  early  view  of 
Jesus,  3  i  3 

Dodona,   552 

Dominic,  203,  335 


572 


INDEX 


Domitian,  344 
Dumas,  the  elder,  428 
Duty,  8 1 
Dyaus,  541 


Education,  as  a  factor  of  char- 
acter, 312  ;  influence  of 
nature  in,  137,  148 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  on  the  will, 
76 

Egressive  method,  the,  in  the 
theistic  argument,  48 

Ego,  universal,  90  ;  of  Fichte,  123 

Egypt,  religion  of,  189,  193,  208, 
219,  220,  239  ;  empire  of, 
231  ;  pyramids  of,  545 

Elijah,  367 

Energy,  how  known,  34 

Englishman  and  Hindu,  545 

Enoch,  Book  of,  its  influence  on 
Jesus,  ii 

Epicurus,  319 

Epistles,  relation  of,  to  Gospels, 
298  (see  also  Hebrews,  Paul, 
Peter) 

Essay  on  Man,  Pope's,  106 

Essenes,  the,  491,  530 

Ethical  supersedes  cosmical  pro- 
cess, 183 

Ethnography,  204,  208,  212 

Eucharist,  the,  561  (see  also 
Supper,  Last) 

Euhemerism,  207 

Euripides,  254 

Evangelists  as  authors,  353,  358 

Evil,  problem  of,  94  ff.  ;  and 
faith,  97  ;  and  optimism,  99  ; 
and  pessimism,  in  ;  and  im- 
mortality, 149  ;  and  the 
Incarnation,  168  ;  not  mere 
negation,  100  ;  Leibnitz's 
idea  of,  104  ;  criticized,  155  ; 
kinds  of,  134  ;  physical, 


classes  of,  136  ;  arising  from 
the  interrelation  of  man  and 
nature,  136  ;  educative  func- 
tion of,  137  ;  evils  peculiar  to 
man,  141  ;  inflicted  by  man 
on  man,  146  ;  evil,  moral,  its 
problem,  96;  defined,  150; 
not  disciplinary,  150;  and 
freedom,  161  ;  Divine  interfer- 
ence no  remedy  for,  162  ;  con- 
nexion of  with  suffering,  166 

Evolution,  a  theory  of  the  cre- 
ational  mode,  38  ;  if  taken  as 
a  Causal  theory,  problem  of, 
38  ;  must  explain  mind,  40  ; 
and  speculation,  52  ;  intelli- 
gence in,  54  ;  means  continu- 
ous creation,  59  ;  and  ethics, 
68  ;  differentiation  in,  73 

Experience,  problem  of,  6,  28  ; 
and  pain,  135 

Ezekiel,  Book  of,  its  influence 
on  Jesus,  11  ;  the  Temple  in, 
488  ;  priestly  character  of,  252 


F 


Faith,  and  reason,  18  ;  and 
knowledge,  201  ;  and  re- 
ligion, 286  ;  described,  548  ; 
characteristic  of  the  Christian 
religion,  549  ;  and  the  Christian 
society,  528 

Family  as  a  factor  of  character, 
312 

Fichte,  ego  of,  123,  397  ;  in- 
fluence of,  on  Schopenhauer, 
122 

Forms  of  perception  supplied 
by  personality,  35 

Founder,  of  a  religion,  and  re- 
former, 263  ;  and  the  religion, 
286  ;  operates  in  a  congenial 
society,  264  ;  significance  of, 
for  the  religion,  264 


INDEX 


573 


Francis  of  Assisi,  263,  535 
Frazer  on  sacrifice,  482  n. 
Freedom,  moral,  problem  of,  6  ; 
and  personality,  30  ;  and  idea 
of  energy,  34  ;  and  freedom  of 
action,  75  ;  implied  in  all 
moral  judgements,  77  ;  de- 
duced by  Kant  from  the  cate- 
gorical imperative,  88  ;  and 
God,  157;  the  correlative  of 
law,  1 60 


Gamaliel,  447,  466,  490  n.,  527 

Ganges,  553 

Gibbon  on  Mohammed,  279 

Gloatz,  476 

God,  the  creative  mind,  55,  57  ; 
idea  of,  immanent  and  trans- 
cendent, 58  ;  omnipotent  and 
omniscient,  58  ;  Kant's  de- 
duction of,  from  categorical 
imperative,  88  ;  not  an  ab- 
straction, 153  ;  omnipotence 
not  a  synonym  for  God,  134  ; 
impersonation  of  the  absolute 
good,  154;  no  mere  me- 
chanic, 157  ;  immutable,  not 
immobile,  159  ;  juridically  de- 
scribed, 163  ;  Hebrew  concep- 
tion of,  245  ;  God  in  religion, 
537  ;  in  the  Christian  religion, 
539  ;  moral  sovereignty  of, 
86,  89, 103,  108, 151,  164, 292  ; 
law  and  sanction  to  Him  a 
unity,  164  ;  Fatherhood  of,  350, 
389,  543  ;  God  and  man,  dis- 
parity of,  8  ;  real  to  each  other, 
57  ;  ever  in  active  interrela- 
tion, 58  ;  the  end  of  creation 
His  glory  or  man's  good,  156  ; 
as  reflected  in  His  creature, 
156  ;  mankind  a  unity  to  Him, 
165  ;  His  immanence  in  nature 


and  man,  171  ;  religion  a 
mutual  relation  between  Him 
and  man,  202  ;  His  action  in 
history,  225  ;  and  on  man,  18  ; 
God  and  evil  •  why  does  He 
permit  evil  ?  96,  152,  159  ; 
His  interference  no  remedy 
for  evil,  162  ;  how  interpreted 
by  Christ  and  through  Him, 
349,  339-41,  542-44 

Goethe,  52,  115 

Golden  Rule,  the,  382 

Gospels,  strata  in  the,  10  ; 
secondary  element  in,  13  ; 
criticism  of,  297  ;  signifi- 
cance of,  306  ;  the  natural 
view  of  Jesus  in,  310;  the 
supernatural  view  of  Jesus 
in,  324  ;  Jesus  a  unity  in, 
327  ;  a  study  from  life,  329  ; 
sanity  of,  336  ;  idea  of  God 
in,  349  ;  reality  of  their  world, 
386  ;  as  creations  in  literature, 
353  ;  as  books  of  religion,  358  ; 
unconscious  art  of,  359  ;  not 
the  work  of  literary  men,  360  ; 
synoptics,  date  of,  297  ;  rela- 
tion to  Epistles,  298,  436  ; 
sources  of,  298  ;  compared 
with  each  other,  300 ;  with 
Pauline  Epistles,  443  ;  the 
fourth,  19,  457,  477  (see  also 
Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  John} 

Grace,  doctrine  of,  101,  165 

Greece,  religion  of,  192,  207, 
210,  236,  239,  473,  541,  549 

Greek,  the  characterized,  52-2 

Greek  social  ideal,  523 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  337  ;  the 
Great,  332 


II 


Haeckel,  42 
Hagar,  248 


574 


INDEX 


Happiness,  as  basis  of  morals, 
78  ;  indefinite  term,  79  ;  and 
highest  good  in  Kant's  ethics, 
80 

Hebraism  and  Christianity,  261  ; 
and  Judaism,  549 

Hebrew  literature,  its  influence 
on  Jesus,  1 1  ;  narratives  of 
the  creation  in,  246 

Hebrew  religion,  249,  488,  532  ; 
limitation  of,  by  tribal  instinct, 
251  ;  monotheism  of,  244  ;  in- 
fluence of  Moses  on,  267,  269  ; 
and  sin,  372  ;  conflict  of  pro- 
phet and  priest  in,  559 

Hebrews,  Epistle  to  the,  date 
of,  299  ;  its  affinities  with 
Matthew,  300  ;  Alexandrian, 

447,  499  ;     idea  of  Christ  in, 

448,  475  ;    idea  of  the  law  in, 
485,  492  ;  of  the  Temple,  487  ; 
interpretation       of        Christ's 
Death  in,  494  ;    the  idea  of  the 
Church  in,  531 

Hegel,  on  the  Incarnation,  19  ; 
optimism  of,  no;  Schopen- 
hauer's dislike  of,  122  ;  on 
Greek  religion,  236 

Hellenic  spirit  in  the  Gospels,  360 

Hellenism,  254,  454,  463,  491  ; 
of  Luke,  301  ;  of  Paul,  463 

Heracleitus,  454 

Heredity,  problem  of,  147  ;  edu- 
cative value  of,  148 

Hesiod,  239,  541 

Hilarion,  life  of,  332 

iAao"rijpio»»,  493 

Himalayas,   552 

Hindu  philosophy,  117,  241 

Hinduism,  7,  219,  221,  240, 
549  ;  compared  with  Vedism, 
260 

Hiuen  Tsung,  276 

History,  significance  of,  176  ; 
order  in,  necessity  of,  175  ;  a 


late  idea,  178  ;  contrasted 
with  the  order  of  nature,  180  ; 
its  cause  mind,  181  ;  how 
does  it  arise,  183  ;  history  a 
continued  creative  process, 
183  ;  and  psychology,  380  ; 
and  speculation,  470 

Hobbes,  on  morals,  64 

Holman  Hunt's  Shadow  of  the 
Cross,  395 

Holy  places,  550 

Homer,  198,  222,  239,  255,  308, 
5io 

Hosea,  Book  of,  its  influence  on 
Jesus,  n 

Hume,  on  miracles,  24  ;  his 
philosophical  principles,  24  ; 
speculation  paralyzed  in  the 
school  of,  50  ;  his  theory  of 
morals,  66 

Huxley,  on  Man,  41  ;  his  ethical 
theory,  70 


Ideas  and  impressions,  Hume's 
doctrine  of,  24 

Illusions  in  history,  15 

Imagination,  and  mystery,  7  ; 
mythical  action  of,  12 

Immanence  (see  God) 

Immortality,  Kant's  doctrine  of, 
88  ;  in  relation  to  the  prob- 
lem of  evil,  149 

Incarnation  (of  Christ),  what 
kind  of  mystery,  7  ;  and  prob- 
lem of  evil,  1 68  ;  the  idea  in 
Hinduism,  275 

India,  social  system  of,  193  (see 
Caste),  religion  of  (see  Brah- 
manism,  Hinduism,  Vedism) 

Intellect,  the,  and  the  intel- 
gible  correspond,  35  ;  intelli- 
gence in  evolution,  34 

Isaiah,  Book  of,  250,  254,   367, 


INDEX 


575 


488  ;     its  influence  on  Jesus, 

ii 
Islam,    7,    117,    217,    224,    230, 

277»    S32  ',       and    the    sword, 

281  ;     as    a    state,    283  ;     its 

ultimate  ideas,  284 
Isis,  552 
Isotta,  556 
Israel,   religion   of    (see  Hebrew 

religion,  Judaism,  Law) 


James  and  John,  the  disciples, 
401,  402-405 

Jeremiah,  Book  of,  488  ;  its  in- 
fluence on  Jesus,  n  ;  mono- 
theism of,  250 

Jerome,  332 

Jerusalem,  fall  of,  299  ;  Christ's 
entry  into,  412  ;  attitude  of, 
to  Christ,  416  ;  the  holy  place 
of  the  Jews,  553,  554 

Jesus  of  the  Gospels  and  Christ 
of  the  Creeds,  3,  305-308  ; 
the  natural  view  of  Him  in 
the  Gospels,  310;  super- 
natural view,  324  ;  they  con- 
stitute a  unity,  327  ;  a  study 
from  life,  329  ;  Schmiedel  on, 
302,  392  ;  difficulty  in  the 
case  of  an  imaginary  history 
of,  350  ;  simplicity  yet  com- 
plexity of  the  Gospel  view, 
352  ;  an  unconscious  sitter, 
359  ;  light  and  shadow  in 
His  life,  360  ;  birth  of,  326, 
349,  374  ;  the  temptation,  337; 
its  continuance,  341  ;  ]rsus 
and  Nicodcmus,  352  ;  and  the 
woman  of  Samaria,  352  j  and 
the  young  ruler,  363  ;  the 
charge  against  Him,  320;  His 
entry  into  Jerusalem,  412; 
cleansing  of  the  Temple,  413  ; 


lamentation  over  Jerusalem, 
416  ;  His  anointing  for  the 
burial,  417  ;  before  Pilate, 
319  ;  and  His  disciples,  400  ff. 
(see  also  James  and  John, 
Judas,  Peter) 

Jesus  as  teacher  character- 
ized, 381  ;  nature  and  man 
reflected  in,  383  ;  univer- 
sality of,  388  ;  scope  of, 
389  ;  influence  of,  392  ;  reti- 
cence of  the  earlier  teaching, 
391  ;  claims  advanced  in, 
393  ;  on  His  passion,  395  ; 
His  kingdom,  406  ;  the  Apo- 
calyptic discourses,  417  ;  in- 
terpretation of  the  Last  Sup- 
per, 42 1  ;  He  changes  the  con- 
ception of  God  and  man,  542  ; 
His  parables,  384  ;  parable  of 
the  barren  fig-tree,  412  ;  par- 
able of  the  husbandmen,  416 
metaphor  of  the  corner  stone, 
416  ;  parable  of  the  marriage 
supper,  416  ;  parables  pecu- 
liar to  Luke,  302  ;  His  miracles, 
330,  347,  443;  their  ethical 
character,  337,  342,  347  •  un- 
questioned even  by  His  en- 
emies, 347  ;  His  social  idea, 
523  ;  its  religious  nature,  526  ; 
His  social  method,  527  ;  His 
character,  its  originality,  367  ; 
catholicity,  368  ;  potency, 
370  ;  not  depraved  by  power, 
346  ;  nor  alienated  by  it  from 
man,  347;  His  ethical  tran- 
scendence, 3^7;  sinlcssncs-:, 
362  ;  without  consciousness 
of  sin,  361  ;  forgives  sin,  yet 
is  guest  of  sinners,  364  ;  His 
lowliness,  37');  His  passion 
in  Gethsemane,  42;  ;  what  it 
means,  427  If.  (sec  Christ) 

Jew,   the,  characterized,   522 


576 


INDEX 


Job,  248 

John,  his  conception  of  Christ, 

326,  451,  475,  502 
John     the    Baptist,    452  ;        on 

Jesus,  362 
Jordan,  553 

Josephus,  299,  387,  491 
Jubal,  legend  of,  143 
Judaism,  253,  549 
Judas  and  Christ,  362,  430 
Julian,  427 
Juridical  idea  of  moral  evil,  150 


K 


Kali,  240 

Kant,  compared  with  Mill,  51  ; 
on  the  moral  law,  84,  87  ;  the 
categorical  imperative,  88  ; 
compared  with  Butler,  89  ; 
his  influence  on  Schopenhauer, 
122  ;  dictum  of,  228 

Karma,  123  (see  Merit) 

Keble,  333 

Keim,  414  vt.,  427 

Kepler  quoted,  37 

Kingdom  of  God,  389,  524 

Knowledge,  ancient  problem  of, 
28 

Koran,  7,  388,  532  ;  quoted,  278, 
280,  282';  autobiographical 
character  of,  278  ;  vision  of 
Abraham  in,  280  ;  miracu- 
lous character  of,  285 

Krishna,  7,  240,  541,  552 

Kung  Fu  Tze,  224  (see  Con- 
fucius) 


Lang,  Andrew,  on  religion, 
Language,  implies  reason,  35 
Lao  Tze,  224 

Law,   and   religion,    192  ;      civil, 
62,    164,    532  ;       Jewish,    248, 


465  ;  curse  of  the,  504  ;  dis- 
tinction of  Rabbinical  and 
Levitical,  484,  503  ;  moral 
and  physical  distinguished, 
163  ;  natural,  91  ;  Roman  (see 
Rome) 

Leibnitz,  optimism  of,  104  ; 
and  Schopenhauer,  125  ;  criti- 
cized, 155  ;  philosophy  of,  179 

Lewes,  G.  H.,  his  History  of 
Philosophy,  50 ;  influenced  by 
science,  52 

Life,  its  gain  through  death,  144 

Liddon's  life  of  Pusey,  332 

Literature  and  religion,  198 

Lobeck,  236 
'Locke,  24,  31 

Logia,  298,  380,  390,  435 

Logos,  origin  of  the  idea,  454, 
Philonian,  255,  454  ;  of  John, 
326,  452,  455 

Lourdes,  553 

Love,  native  to  man,  508  ;  of 
Penelope  and  Odysseus,  510; 
of  Dante  and  Beatrice,  510  ; 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  389  ; 
the  law  of  the  kingdom  of 
God,  524;  of  Christ,  509  ;  its 
power,  512  ;  the  new  law,  514 

Lucretius,  239 

Luke's  gospel,  296  ;  Pauline, 
300  ;  characterized,  301  ;  dis- 
tinctive parables  of,  301  ; 
style  of,  325  ;  idea  of  Jesus  in, 

^325 
\vrpoVj  404,  410 


M 


Macedon,  empire  of,  231 

Mahabharata,  541 

Man  interprets  nature,  33  ;     the 

key     to     all     mysteries,     60  ; 

nature  a  problem  to  him,  172  ; 

acted  on  by  nature,  men,  and 


INDEX 


577 


God,  182  ;  a  doer  as  well  as 
thinker,  61, ;  his  responsi- 
bility, 133  ;  his  moral  free- 
dom, 157  ;  his  capability  of 
amelioration,  157  ;  a  problem 
to  himself,  173  ;  man  and  evil, 
94>  I33'>  nian  and  physical 
evil,  134  ;  his  fallen  state,  167  ; 
unity  of  the  race,  173  ;  the 
race  a  unity  to  God,  165  ;  the 
idea  of  his  unity  distasteful, 

174  ;  signification  of  the  idea, 

175  ;  the  unity  as  an  imma- 
nent    teleology,     176  ;         his 
unity  realized  through  Christ, 
547  ;       his    history    continues 
the   record   of  creation,    171  ; 
order  in  his  history,  178,  181  ; 
material    and    spiritual    outfit 
of  savage  and  civilized  man, 
1 88  ;    is  before  history,    204  ; 
primitive,  204  ;  man  and  God  : 
his  capacity  for  God,  156  ;  his 
relation    to    God    in    religion, 
200  ;    holy  as  God  is  holy,  250 
(see     also     God     and      man)  ; 
Man  and  Christ':  idea  of  man 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  359  ; 
conception  of  man  altered  by 
Christ,  544  ;    man  dignified  by 
Christ,  546 

Manu,  laws  of,  207,  559 

Marcus  Antoninus,  344 

Mark,  Gospel  of,  characterized, 
300  ;  idea  of  Jesus  in,  324 

Martha  and  Mary,  304 

Mary  (the  Virgin),  301,  535  ; 
and  Jesus,  313;  immaculate 
conception  of,  374  ;  appear- 
ance of,  at  Lourdes,  553 

Matter,  problem  of,  6  ;  various 
definitions  of,  52  ;  mind  has 
no  reality  for,  57  ;  "  matter, 
motion  and  force,"  34 

Matthew,  Gospel  of,  character- 
P.C.R. 


ized,  300  ;  idea  of  Jesus  in,  325 

Mecca,  the  holy  place  of  Moham- 
medanism, 283,  284,  553,  554 

Medina,  281,  282 

Melchizedek,  248,  496 

Messiah  (see  Christ,  names  of) 

Messianic  hope,  the,  314,  599  ;  in- 
fluence of  upon  the  doctrine 
of  the  Person  of  Christ,  12 

Metaphysics  of  the  Creed,  3  ; 
in  the  school  of  Hume,  50  ;  of 
knowledge  and  ethics  akin, 
64 

Mill,  James,  Analysis  of  the 
Human  Mind,  50  ;  on  morals, 
67 

Mill,  J.  S.,  his  metaphysics,  51  ; 
his  qualitative  distinction  of 
pleasures,  67  ;  his  definition  of 
the  right,  78  ;  his  indictment 
of  nature,  95  ;  his  religious 
instinct,  197 

Milton,  198  ;  his  Satan,  513 

Mind,  problem  of,  6  ;  interprets 
nature,  33  ;  is  open  to  God, 
57  ;  the  cause  of  order  in 
history,  181  (see  also  Per- 
sonality, Self) 

Miracles,  Hume  on  their  cre- 
dibility, 24  ;  ecclesiastical,  335 
(see  Jesus) 

Mohammed,  224,  553  ;  his 
influence  on  Arabia,  193  ;  his 
story,  279  ;  monotheism  of, 
280  ;  myths  concerning,  343, 
472  ;  sensuality  of,  369  ;  and 
Christ,  530  ;  and  his  religion, 

532 

Mohammedanism,  compared  with 
Brahmanism  and  Buddhism, 
277  (see  Islam) 

Monotheism,  Semitic,  217,  219  ; 
Hebraic,  244,  .260,  473  ;  of 
Mohammed,  280  ;  a  late 
development  in  religion,  538 

37 


578 


INDEX 


Moral  ideal,  the,  immanent,  in 
man,  90 

Moral  ideas,  sources  of,  64  ; 
judgements  depend  on  the 
idea  of  freewill,  61,  63  ;  law 
immanent  in  man  and  the 
universe,  84  ;  preceptive  and 
vindicative,  166  ;  freedom  its 
correlative,  160 

Morality  is  social,  62 

Morals,  theory  of  :  individual- 
istic theory  of  Hobbes,  65  ; 
Hume's  theory  of  social  feel- 
ing, 65  ;  Bentham's  utili- 
tarianism, 66  ;  evolutionary 
ethics,  68  ;  Darwin's  social  in- 
stinct, 70  ;  Spencer's  "  ideal 
congruity,"  71  ;  determinism 
of  Jonathan  Edwards,  76  ;  J.  S. 
Mill's  criterion  of  happiness, 
78  ;  Butler's  doctrine  of  con- 
science, 85  ;  Kant's  cate- 
gorical imperative,  87  ;  de- 
ductions, 89 

Morley,  John,  on  Deism,  108 
(note) 

Moses,  254,  367,  482  ;  his  in- 
fluence on  Israel,  267  ;  and 
Christ,  528 

Motives,  relation  of,  to  will,  76 

Music,  not  in  nature,  33 

Mystery,  in  religion,  4  ;  of 
creation,  354  ;  mysteries  of 
nature,  5  ;  of  art,  6  ;  man 
the  key  to  all,  60  ;  the  Greek, 
419 

Mysticism,   366  ;      Oriental,   522 

Mythical  imagination,  morbid- 
ness of  the,  332 

Mythology,  7,  189  ;  Vedic  and 
Homeric,  222  ;  Chaldaean, 
246  ;  Greek,  472  ;  tran- 
sitory character  of,  356  ;  con- 
tinues history,  472 

Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  335  ; 


of    Buddha,    335,    472  ;       of 
Mohammed,  343,  472 

N 

Napoleon,  407 

Naturalism,  23 

Nature,  mysteries  of,  5  ;  Spin- 
oza's view  of,  24 ;  idea  of 
criticized  on  Hume's  prin- 
ciples, 24  ;  cannot  inter- 
pret man,  28  ;  relations  of, 
with  personality,  30  ;  colour 
and  sound  are  not  in,  31  ; 
interpreted  by  mind,  33,  55, 
291  ;  evolves  the  involved,  40  ; 
stands  in  the  supernatural, 
56  ;  Mill's  indictment  of,  95  ; 
as  cause  of  suffering,  136  ;  as 
educative  of  man,  137,  148  ; 
universal  motherhood  of,  140  ; 
inexorable  for  beneficent  pur- 
pose, 140  ;  cannot  speak  the 
last  word  on  evil,  168  ;  a 
problem  to  man,  172  ;  order 
in  contrasted  with  order  in 
history,  180  ;  action  of,  on 
man,  181  ;  does  not  create 
religion,  210 

Naturalism  incompatible  with 
the  apostolic  Christology,  23 

Neoplatonism  of  Augustine,  100 

Nero,   344 

Nicaea,  Council  of,  3,  321 

Nicholas  of  Cusa,  102 

Nicodemus,  352 

Nihilism,  a  form  of  pessimism, 
116 

Nirvana,  121,  274 


O 


Obligation,    Bentham    on,    67  ; 

origin  of,  81  ;    Kant  on,  87 
Odysseus,  510 


INDEX 


579 


Old   Testament,    367,   393,   463, 

473 

Olympus,  552 

Omnipotence  and  omniscence 
(see  God) 

Opportunity  as  factor  of  char- 
acter, 312 

Optimism,  and  the  problem  of 
evil,  99  ;  of  Plato  and  the 
Stoics,  99  ;  of  Augustine,  100  ; 
of  Nicholas  of  Cusa,  102  ;  of 
Leibnitz,  104  ;  of  Pope,  106  ; 
criticized  by  Voltaire,  108  ; 
of  Spinoza  and  Hegel,  no; 
of  Socialism,  116;  Buddhism, 
as  an,  121 

Order  in  nature  and  history 
distinguished,  180  ;  the  child 
of  religion,  192  (see  also  His- 
tory, Nature) 

Osiris,  24,  552 

Othman,  286 

Ovid,  quoted,  552 


Pantheism,  of  Giordano  Bruno, 
103  ;  of  Spinoza  and  Hegel, 
no;  of  India  and  Greece, 
219  ;  of  Hindu  philosophy, 
241  ;  not  a  religion,  241 

Parables  (see  Jesus  Christ) 

Pascal,  97,  382 

Passions,  primary,  their  regula- 
tion, 184 

Passover,  the,  illustrates  the 
death  of  Christ,  403 

Paul,  an  epitome  of  his  day,  440  ; 
his  epistles,  10,  207  ;  their  early 
date,  2<.)~  ;  criticism  of,  442  ; 
contrasted  with  the  Synoptic 
Gospels,  443  ;  idea  of  Christ 
in,  445  ;  idea  of  the  Church 
in  ^3 1  ;  the  psychological 
origin  of  his  theology,  401  ', 


its  sources,  463  ;  his  relation 
to  the  Jewish  Law,  465,  504 

Paulus,  427 

Penelope,  5  10 

Persia,  religion  of,  193,  265  ; 
empire  of,  231 

Person,  a  social  unit,  181  ;  a 
supernatural  and  the  modern 
view  of  nature,  56,  60 

Personality,  not  to  be  elimin- 
ated from  nature,  30  ;  re- 
lations of,  with  nature,  30  ; 
interprets  nature,  33  ;  the 
vehicle  of  moral  good,  91  ; 
natural  factors  of,  312  (see 
also  Mind,  Self) 

Persons,  in  the  Godhead,  9 

Pessimism,  causes  of,  112;  un- 
congenial to  the  Greek  mind, 
113  ;  compared  with  mediaeval 
asceticism,  114;  of  Goethe 
and  Byron,  115  ;  political, 
116  ;  of  philosophic  Buddhism, 
1 19;  of  Schopenhauer,  120; 
of  Von  Hartmann,  127  ;  ap- 
preciation and  criticism  of, 
129 

Peter,  the  informant  of  Mark, 
300  ;  rebukes  Christ,  313  ; 
confesses  sinfulness,  362  ;  con- 
fesses Christ,  397  ;  rebuked 
by  Christ,  398,  462  ;  spokes- 
man of  the  disciples,  401  ; 
Epistle  of,  on  the  death  of 
Chiist,  501  ;  his  preaching  at 
1'entccost,  527 

Pl'arisees,  their  view  of  Jesus, 
313,  4<;i>  ;  their  relation  to 
tlie  Apostles,  400 

Phcidias,  91 ,   108 

Philip,  and  Christ,  313 

1  Miilo,  447,  463,  41  j  i 

Philosophy,  prol  lenis  of,  6  ;  of 
religion  (see  Religion) 

Phoenicia,   religion   of,    191,    220 


58o 


INDEX 


Physical  forces,  the,  and  moral 
freedom,  34,  78 

Pilate,  an  impersonation  of 
Rome,  318  ;  convinced  of  the 
innocence  of  Jesus,  320,  361  ; 
his  famous  question,  320  ; 
vision  of,  321 

Place,  as  a  factor  of  character, 
312  ;  in  religion,  551 

Plato,  quoted,  37  ;  optimism  of, 
99  ;  Schopenhauer  on,  122  ; 
and  religion,  198,  239  ;  on 
Socrates,  361  ;  his  ideal  of 
manhood,  368  ;  and  the  Chris- 
tian idea,  460  ;  referred  to, 
241,  254,  360 

Pleasure  and  pain  as  basis  of 
morals,  65,  78 

Pletho,    Gemisthus,    556 

Pliny,  321 

Plotinus,  100,  241 

Polytheism,  vindicated  by  pan- 
theism, 241  ;  of  the  Semites, 
268  ;  cannot  be  moral,  538 

Pope,  and  the  problem  of  evil, 
104,  106  ;  compared  with  the 
speculative  physicism  of  to- 
day, 109 

Portiuncula,  the,  555 

Positivism  (see  Comte) 

Preaching,    Christian,    562 

Priesthood,   Aaronic,  494 

Priests,  the  Jewish,  their  relation 
to  Christ  and  the  Apostles, 
490 

Probation,  state  of,  a  Deistic 
idea,  166 

Proclus,  549 

Protagoras,  549 

Psalms,  the,  influence  of,  on 
Jesus,  1 1  ;  sacred  book  of 
Monotheism,  250 

Psychology  of  secondary  quali- 
ties, 31 

Ptolemies,  the,  254 


Pujari,  the,  240 

Pusey,  Dr.,  morbidness  of  his 
sense  of  sin,  333 

Q 

Qualities,  secondary,  31  ;  are 
not  things  of  external  nature, 
33 


R 


Race,  as  a  factor  of  character, 
3ii 

Raphael,  91,  198 

Reason,  antinomies  of  the  pure, 
5  ;  mysteries  of,  6  ;  and 
faith,  19  ;  can  only  live  in  a 
rational  world,  35 

Redemption,  166  (see  also  Christ) 

Reformer  and  founder  of  re- 
ligion, 263 

Regressive  method,  the,  in  the- 
ism, 41 

Religion,  aesthetic,  4  ;  mystery 
in,  5  ;  creative  of  order,  185, 
192  ;  philosophy  of,  186,  226  ; 
phenomena  of,  187  ;  scientific 
view  of,  195,  205  ;  is  neces- 
sary to  man,  196  ;  as  archi- 
tectonic idea,  198  ;  problems 
of,  199  ;  idea  of,  200  ;  Herbert 
Spencer  on,  205  ;  ethno- 
graphic and  historical  method 
in,  compared,  208,  213  ;  rooted 
in  reason,  210  ;  conditioned 
by  nature,  211  ;  conflict  of 
ideal  and  formal  in,  216; 
influence  of  race  on,  216; 
of  place  on,  218  ;  of  ethnical  re- 
lations on,  220  ;  of  history  on, 
221  ;  of  social  idea  on,  222  ; 
of  great  personalities  on,  223  ; 
of  idea  and  institution  in,  235  ; 
opposed  action  of  custom 


INDEX 


and  thought  in,  239  ;  never 
a  pantheism,  241  ;  Hebrew 
idea  of,  247  ;  and  founder, 
286  ;  and  people,  520 

Religions,  vision  of,  in  history, 
191  ;  of  India  and  Greece 
compared,  221  ;  as  national 
and  missionary,  230  ;  spon- 
taneous and  founded,  259 ; 
positive,  532 

Renaissance,  and  the  problem 
of  sin,  102 

Renan,  on  Semitic  languages, 
217  ;  on  Luke,  325  ;  on  the 
Agony,  427 

Responsibility,  of  the  individual 
and  the  race,  165  (see  also 
God  and  man) 

Rig  Veda,  207,  388,  541,  559 

Rishi,  the,  559 

Ritsch!,  on  AUT^M/,  404  ;  on  the 
Death  of  Christ,  492  n. 

Roman,    the    characterized,    522 

Roman   Catholic  worship,    536  ; 


Romanoff,  house  of,  344 

Rome,  law  of,  91,  231,  523, 
545  ;  religion  of,  102,  193, 
207,  518,  523,  540,  559; 
empire  of,  231,  209  ;  fall 
of,  2(>(),  321  ;  impersonated 
in  Pilate,  318;  influence 
of,  on  Jesus,  n  ;  on  Paul, 
464 


Sacrifice,   Fra/er  on,  482  n. 
Sadducees,    their   view   of   Jesus, 

3  '  4 

Samaria,  woman  of,  3^2 
Savage  man,  mvstery  of  thought 

in ,    10;  ;     and   religion,  2  \  5 
Science,    immensity    of    its    field, 


194  ;   inadequacy  of,  194  ;  and 
religion,  195 
Schleicher,  on  matter  and  spirit, 

52 

Schleiermacher,  428 

Schmiedel,  on  the  Gospels,  302, 
392 

Scholasticism,  mediaeval,  follows 
Augustine,  102 

Schopenhauer,  pessimism  of,  121  ; 
influenced  by  Kant,  Fichte, 
and  Buddha,  122  ;  com- 
pared with  Buddua,  125  ; 
representative  of  tendency  of 
the  age,  128  ;  his  idea  of  God, 

154 

Secondary  qualities,  31 

Seeberg  on  Ritschl,  492  n. 

Seleucidae,  253 

Self,  the,  Hume  on,  25  ;  con- 
ception of,  in  a  "  system  of 
nature  "  (see  also  Mind,  Per- 
sonality) 

Self-realization,  the  law  of  hu- 
man progress,  90 

Semites,  monotheism  of  th«, 
217,  219;  social  system  of, 
223  ;  religion  of,  230,  532 

Seneca,  on  sin,  372 

Septuagint,   254 

Servant  of  God,  the  suffering, 
398,  460,  501 

Shelley,  idealism  of,  115  ;  quoted, 
131 

Sigismondo  Pandolfo  Malatcsta, 
556 

Simon  Magus,  347 

Sin,  as  the  occasion  of  grace, 
101  ;  Christian  idea  of,  n>^  ; 
nature  of,  150  ;  original,  K>;  ; 
sense  of,  awakened  by  the 
cr< >>s,  -?7  > ,  4  ?  > 

Sinlessne^s,  idea  of,  37 },  ^~<> 
^sec  a/so  Jesus,  character 

of; 


INDEX 


Siva,  240 

Slavery,   ancient,    544 

Social  problem,  the,  147  ;  ideal 
of  Greece  and  of  Christ,  523 

Socialism,  a  form  of  optimism, 
116 

Socrates,  361,  549 

Solomon,  248,  488 

Son  of  man,  origin  of  the  con- 
ception, 1 1 

Sound,  not  in  nature,  31 

Sovereignty,  moral,  of  God  (see 
God) 

Space,  problem  of,  6  ;  Hume 
on,  25 

Species,  origin  of,   38 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  morals, 
71  ;  his  anthropological  theory 
of  religion,  206 

Speculative  age,  the,  preceded 
by  the  historical,  470 

Spinoza,  his  pantheistic  op- 
timism, no;  and  Schopen- 
hauer, 124  ;  his  idea  of  God, 
154,  179  ;  pantheism  of,  241 

Spirit,  is  thought  made  con- 
crete, 55  ;  the  real  creation  of 
God,  57 

Spontaneous    generation,   49 

State,  judgement  of  the,  62  ; 
Islam  as  a,  281,  283  ;  physical 
penalties  of  the,  533  ;  and 
religion,  534 

Steinmeyer,  428 

Stephen,  491,  520 

Stoic,  ideal  of  perfect  man,  90, 
357  >  optimism,  99  ;  oppo- 
sition to  pessimism,  113; 
definition  of  moral  evil,  150; 
view  of  religion,  239  ;  Logos, 
454  ;  influence  on  Paul,  464  ; 
idea  of  unity  of  the  race,  547  ; 
ethics,  559 

Strauss,  128,  427 

Struggle  for  existence,  38  ;  moral 


problem  of,   109  ;     pathos  of, 

128 

Suffering,  166  (see  also  Evil) 

Sulpicius,  337 

Supernatural,  modern  antipathy 
to  the,  23  ;  true  and  false 
ideas  of  the,  56 

Superstition,  nature  of,  206,  553 

Supper,  the  Last,  419  ;  narra- 
tives of,  419  ;  interpreted  by 
Christ,  421 

Survival  of  the  fittest,  moral 
problem  of,  109 

Synagogue  and  Temple  con- 
trasted, 484,  487 

Syncretism,  517  ;  Christianity 
is  not  a,  518 

Synoptists  (see  Gospels) 


Tabernacle,  the,  487 

Tabula  rasa,  29 

Tacitus,  quoted,  552 

Tao-teh  King,  382 

Temple,  the,  415  ;  Christ  the 
true,  457  ;  and  synagogue, 
484,  487  ;  and  the  Apostles, 
489  ;  in  the  Apocalypse,  502 

Tennyson,  quoted,  95 

Tertullian,  337,  382 

Thi'odicce,  of  Leibnitz,  104 

Thucydides,   360,   387 

Tiberius,  344 

Time,  problem  of,  6  ;  Hume  on, 
25  ;  as  a  factor  of  character, 
312 

Trajan,  rescript  of,  321 

Transcendence  of  will  and 
thought,  78 

Transcendental  elements  in 
knowledge,  51 

Transcendental  and  supernatu- 
ral, the,  55 

Tyndall  quoted,  55 


INDEX 


583 


U 

Unity  of  man  (see  Man") 

Upadana  of  Buddha,   124 

Upanishads,  388 

Ur-Marcus,  435 

Utilitarianism,  65,  78  ;  cannot 
explain  the  categorical  im- 
perative, 83 


Vanini,  427 

Varuna,  541,  550 

Vatican,  Council,  Decrees  of  the, 

207 

Vedantd,  241 
Vedic  mythology,  222  ;    religion, 

260,    541  ;   India,    271 
Virtue     as    an    element    of    the 

highest  good,  88 
Vishnu,  240 
Voltaire,    the   Candide   of,    108  ; 

unconscious  theodicy  of,   108  ; 

on  Mohammed,  278 
Von    Hartmann,    pessimism    of, 

127  ;     Strauss  on,    128 

W 

Wallace,  Alfred,  praises  Darwin, 
54 


Wcismann,  30 

Wendt,  405,  476 

Wheel  of  existence,  119 

Will,  problem  of,  6  ;  explains 
energy,  34  ;  freedom  of  the, 
76  (see  Freedom)  ;  a  creative 
force,  89  ;  idea  of,  in  Fichte 
and  Schopenhauer,  123 

Wisdom  literature,  influence  of, 
on  Jesus,  1 1 

Witchcraft,  346 

Worship  and  theology,  480  ; 
and  religion,  551  ;  and  the 
institution,  557  ;  potent  in- 
fluence of,  on  religion,  558  ; 
Christian,  the  creation  of  God, 

562  ;     defines  the  worshipper, 

563  ;  end  of,  564 


Xenophanes,  239 
Xenophon  on  Socrates,  361 


Zem  -Zem,  the  well,  553 
Zcno,  254 
Zeus,  340,  541 
Zoroaster,  224,  265 
Zoroastrianism,  7 


A     000  942  889     7 


